Fair dramz

 

See that title? Dramz? Oh yeah. I'm hip and happening although using the word "dramz" about preparing baked goods for the county fair could be considered a tad oxymoronic, although I'm going for ironic.

With my oven up and running, I got a good start on my annual fair baking and put together my first batch of pie crust dough. I chilled it properly, but when I went to roll it out it was all crumbly and fell apart. So I added more water and set it to chill some more. The same thing happened. I'd read that although you want the butter room temperature for baking, for pie dough, you want it cold when you mix the dough. I'd also noted that using a food processor to cut the butter in is the new thing.

So I went and used Rob's Target birthday card and bought a food processor. I made more dough. It fell apart. I actually rolled it out and tried to put the apples in it, but in the end it was so pathetic-looking with all my patches. So I went for batch No. 3, adding more butter so it would hold together better. I chilled the (blank) out of it.

By this time I was wondering if the whole thing was worth the effort. I decided to make some cookies to clear my head. I had what looked like a great oatmeal cookie recipe -- all butter, oats and goodness -- and made that. But when I cooked them at the temperature called for in the recipe, they burned. I just about threw in the dish towel. But I collected myself, lowered the oven 25 degrees and made eight perfect oatmeal cookies.

I took out the chilled pie dough and rolled it out under wax paper. This is a great solution when the crust is fussy, but can lead to creases in the dough, which are easy to cover with sugar or something. I managed to get the pie put together looking reasonably good, all brushed with cream and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. It cracked while it was cooking, and there isn't much you can do then, but it looked pretty good. The people at the Fair entry place were all encouraging, coming over to say how nice it looked. (FYI, my Big Secret for pie baking is that I'm the best crust crimper, which really sets off a great pie.)

This year's pie is a gamble. My peaches aren't quite ready, which sucks because there are about a million of them. I decided against a peach pie, then, and made an apple pie, using the apples from the Ojai farmers market guy, who gave me a few extra when I told him they were for a county fair pie. They are amazing gala apples that are all crisp and fresh. But apple pie is the most entered pie category, so there's a good chance I could not get a blue ribbon.

The same hubris led to my entering the most popular cookie categories, sugar, oatmeal and chocolate chip. I want to go up against the best and win. But there's a good chance I won't because these things are so subjective. I've judged quite a few cooking contests and know that when you get up to a certain level of cooking the favorite is determined by individual preference.

This is especially true of the chocolate chip cookies. I'd been messing with recipes to get just the right cookie and each batch was disappointing ndespite promises of being gooey and good. I made some cookies for Courtney and Dave and we all agreed they weren't contest-winning calibre. So Courtney and I sat around and discussed what we consider to be our perfect chocolate chip cookie. We like them buttery, soft, chewy and nice and thin, setting off the chocolate chips, which are always Giardelli.

I decided to take the original Tollhouse cookie recipe as my starting point because no matter how much and far you search it's the Tollhouse recipe that is the Gold Standard of chocolate chip recipes. I cut back on the flour by about a quarter of a cup. I cut the baking soda to 1/2 teaspoon because I HATE the taste of baking soda in my cookies and it's very easy to detect if you've used too much. I also cut the temperature back from the 375 degrees called for, which is way too hot. It works best, carefully monitored, around 355 degrees. The resulting cookies are my version of the perfect chocolate chip cookie. But we'll see what the judges think.

The sugar cookies are a recipe that is unusual for a sugar cookie because it has no eggs and lots of cornstarch. They melt in your mouth. But they don't look very good just dropped by spoon and cooked. So I rolled them in balls and rolled the balls in some superfine sugar. This made a really cool-looking round, shiny cookie and the sugar crust gives the cookie an extra sweet crunch. I've tried making traditional cookies the past two years and always got second place, so we'll see how this works.

Rob makes fun of my obsession with the county fair. But, as I pointed out to him, at this point in our lives it is our interests and hobbies that fulfill us and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be recognized for cooking. This year was particularly grueling because along with all the problems with the recipes, my hip and ankle made moving torturous. (I'm going to develop tooth problems if I have to keep gritting my teeth in pain. I have physical therapy and an appointment with a podiatrist this week so I'm hoping for some relief.)

But this morning when I piled the dogs in the car and we set out to enter the stuff, I realized how much I really love walking in the gate amid all the booths and buildings set up to go with the end results of all my hard work. There's always a breeze from the ocean and there's always that delightful sense of anticipation for the fair. No wonder it's one of my favorite things.

UPDATE:
Well, the pie got second place. I figure it must be the crack in the crust that made it less than perfect. Also the apples sat around for a long time before I made it and lost a lot of moisture.
The cookies all got honorable mentions. I HATE honorable mention -- not even good enough to get an actual prize. I really thought these cookies were extraordinary. But as I said it's all so subjective ... sigh. Oh yeah, the cookies I submitted for the fair didn't have edges as dark as in the pictures. Those are the leftover cookies.

Catch up

I'm home. Once of the best things about living in Ventura is coming home. Of all the places I've lived in my life, this is the first that I've actually felt joy and anticipation whenever I come back from a trip -- as opposed to the letdown I'd feel in Ohio or Colorado or New Jersey.

Coming back here is a joy. I can't wait for my first glimpse of ocean nestled in mountains. I yearn for my deep blue sky and my quaint little seaside town that always feels like vacation.

I also can't wait to get to my farmer's market in Ojai where I found some really cool looking wildflowers for sale. Rob had to take a picture because he fancies himself some kind of Ansel Adams, but with a gay sensibility.

I also had to make my obligatory cake for my monthly meeting. Our oven, however, was broken. I went to use it and it wouldn't get hot. I looked online and it said it was probably the ignitor, which is the element that has to get hot to ignite the gas -- thus the name, I suppose.

A few years back our oven decided to quit. The house was covered by one of those home warranties and we called them and they sent out repairman after repairman, who ordered part after part. As they started to replace parts they'd already replaced, I threw a fit and demanded a new oven -- it had been 4-plus months -- which we got. They left the parts behind and I went through them and found an ignitor.

Rob took the oven apart and found where the ignitor attached, but the connecting wires went into a little hole in the back of the oven. We were flummoxed. Did we have to take the entire oven apart to get to the connector? How were we going to get to the connection to install the part? So I had a repairman come out after the first guys refused to if we already had the part(WTF?.) The first thing he does is pull on the old ignitor pulling the wires and their connectors out of the hole in the main oven where it easily connected. Rob and I were pissed. We essentially paid $84 to have some guy pull the damned wires through the dammed hole. Dammit! He was nice and didn't charge us much because we'd "already done all the work."

This entire drama led to my having to come up with a cake that I didn't have to bake. So I decided to make a trifle. It came out great and was really easy to make and it feeds about a million people because I put it in this really cool, giant trifle dish my friend Kim gave me.

Strawberry/lemon trifle

2 family size Sara Lee pound cakes cut into 3/4 to 1 inch squares
4 tablespoons Torani hazelnut syrup
2 10.5 ounce jars lemon curd, available at Trader Joe's (this is all natural and better than the bright yellow curds sold elsewhere). It's the store brand.
2 large boxes instant Jello vanilla pudding prepared according to directions
3 pints fresh strawberries sliced lengthwise into fourths
1 pint heavy whipping cream whipped
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla

Spread 1/4 of the pound cake squares in bottom of trifle dish. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon hazelnut syrup. Top with one jar of lemon curd spread over top. Spread another 1/4 of the pound cake squares. Top with syrup. Put half the strawberries on top. Put one prepared box of pudding spread on top of the strawberries. Put another quarter cup of the pound cake on top, spread around. Sprinkle with syrup. Spread second jar of lemon curd on top. Spread the last 1/4 of the pound cake squares on top. Top with remaining strawberries -- reserving a few for decoration. Top with second box of prepared pudding. Refrigerate. Right before serving top with the pint of whipped cream -- reserve a portion for people to serve themselves separately.

Visiting Ohio

I've been in Ohio for a week now visiting my daughter Courtney. who's just had baby No. 2. The visit has been tough because she and I haven't been feeling very well lately. Me, I'm still recovering from being hit by a truck -- the pain in my back is excruciating, and then I got some kind of stomach bug -- most likely from the plane trip. Courtney is recovering from an emergency C-Section, which for those who don't know a great deal rougher than a planned one. They pretty much beat on her stomach to get little Alex out because he was in distress. That and a resulting infection has made recovery difficult. Then she got my stomach flu.

I mentioned to Dave that I hadn't had a bad stomach since I'd stopped drinking. It really sucks because it's not as though I'd "earned" it. The indignation is greater. Rob's birthday was Wednesday, so we celebrated it by going out to his favorite restaurant in the Dayton area -- the Paragon. It's our favorite along with the Pine Club and we always go there when we visit. We took a sign so we could put it on Flickr. Dave thought we were dorks.

Lindsay organized a nice surprise dinner for Rob, although he found out and I had to tell him. But he went and had fun, which I knew he would. Rob's not comfortable with any kind of public attention so any birthday acknowledgement upsets him greatly. Kim and Dennis, Shelby, Dave, Lindsay and Ryan were all there. I sent him flowers, but they never got there (Watch out for flowers.com -- their service is quite spotty.)

Courtney, Dave and I went to see the latest Harry Potter movie. Here's the thing: EVERYONE has read the book when he/she goes to the movie so there can't be much deviation. But Rowling writes such long -- and delicious -- tomes that they have to be hacked for a movie. I think I speak for many Potter fans when I say it's kind of hard when you're filling in all the missing parts in your head. But we saw it in a digital, big-screened theater which is a great place for Harry Potter films because they have such great special effects.

One regional note: In Ohio people bolt for the door the minute the credits hit the screen. In California -- at least in our part of Cali., people read all the credits. I figure it's because so many people work in the entertainment industry in Southern California.

Why I hate McDonalds, part XVII

I hate McDonalds. It's not the food -- after all McDonalds' food is what it is -- fatty crap. And sometimes you're just in the mood for a Big Mac or their breakfast food, which generally consists of fatty, greasy sausages, dry biscuits and manufactured cheese. Generally, I avoid McDonalds and can go for about a year between Big Macs -- two teeny, weenie beef patties with slimy sauce, lots of bread, processed cheese and shredded lettuce, which somehow come together to make a marvel of modern cuisine.

No, my problem with McDonalds is the service. They seem to employ the stupidest, rudest, laziest people available in any locale. In Ventura the big problem is that they often man the drive-thrus with non-English speaking people. This means that any deviation in an order is met with general lack of comprehension, a long wait, a manager whose English is only slightly less limited and -- most likely -- a screwed up order. If there's anything that's frustrating it's giving in to the base instinct that drove you to McDonalds in the first place and then getting home and finding that they didn't get your order right.

Rob and I get a kick out of the Ventura McDonalds because they have a sign up: If you have any comments or complaints call ***** (I forget the name). Most days the sign has been carefully covered up by the workers. Don't even try to contact the McDonalds corporate headquarters. You'll get back a form letter, the gist of which is "Sorry about that bad experience, but all McDonalds are franchises and you need to contact your franchise owner directly," which I translate to "It's not our problem."

So when I came to Ohio, I figured the service had to be better. After all people in Ohio can at least speak and understand English. I went to the McDonald's closest to Courtney and Dave's house here in Bellbrook and made it into the long line at 10:25 a.m. They took my order, but it took more than 10 minutes to give it to me and they'd switched to lunch. This meant they didn't have my breakfast sandwich -- a sausage biscuit -- available and they sure as Hell weren't going to make me one -- as the manager made clear. So they gave me a bacon, egg and cheese. Sure, you're wondering, why didn't they just scrape the bacon egg and cheese off and put a damned sausage in the biscuit -- but that would require way too much cognitive ability for your average McDonalds worker.

I came home frustrated and Dave and Courtney laughed because I always get riled when I come into contact the basic stupidity of the Midwestern minimum wage worker. They can speak English, but it doesn't seem to matter much because they're so rude and they really don't care.

The next day Dave came home after getting breakfast for all of us. He'd ordered two sausage biscuits. But when he unwrapped what was labelled as a sausage biscuit he only found a biscuit. Then he noticed a container and opened it. There he found the sausage. Apparently this was a build-it-yourself sausage biscuit.

I had to take a picture of it because it goes to show why I avoid the place. I guess "rude idiot" must be a job requirement.