Ode to EWR

Ah, the joys of Newark Airport. It's funny to me how much I fail to hate this place (except when it's the weekend after Thanksgiving and the weather has canceled almost all flights, including mine, and there are so many people everywhere that I'm on the verge of developing claustrophobia, but that's another story).

The part of travel I really hate the most is the luggage, and on this trip I've neatly circumvented that problem by traveling from where I'm half living now back to the place I'm about to move out of but (and this is key) haven't yet (so 95% of my stuff is still there). Good trick, right? I'm not even bringing a toothbrush. Sadly this does not mean I'm traveling with a single small handbag containing nothing more than a book to read and an official ID to get me on the plane in the first place. But for me one backpack and one shoulder bag weighing less than 20 pounds (estimated) in total is a major triumph. Please remember, people, that whereas most women walk around with lipstick and cell phone in a small purse, I've been known to carry a liter of water, a snack, a 400 page novel and a first aid kit as a matter of course.

So on this trip I'm doing quite well on the luggage front. Which brings me to my next least favorite part of travel: sitting around the airport/train station/bus depot doing nothing. Waiting.

Patience? What?

(Let's note, now, that this is actually the legitimate reason for half the stuff I carry with me on a regular basis: to amuse myself when my infinitesimal patience runs out.)

This all brings us to the crux of this post: my ode to Newark Airport, written to pass the time while waiting for a flight to Nashville, via Charlotte (gods willing the weather cooperates).


Oh Newark Airport, under smoggy skies
You sprawl so hugely, as an airport should.
With seeming endless in- and outbound flights
To take a traveler anywhere she would,
You serve Northern New Jersey like a charm.
No need to drive to far-off JFK:
You're only twenty minutes in the car!
(Depending on traffic on 78.)
As planes alight over the Turnpike lanes
EWR over the airways reigns.

Bread - failure and success.

Well, the holy grail is still out of reach. It was probably me, and not the recipe, but it didn't turn out as I'd hoped. The crust was pretty good, but the inside was a bit spongey. My parents actually liked it better than I did, believe it or not, but they weren't holding out hopes for a substitute for the gluey, stretchy, yeasty gloriousness of real bread. I still have the second half of the dough in the fridge, which I'll try baking as rolls and see how that goes.

Lessons learned? 1. In regular baking I could get away with all kinds of fudged measurements, but I'm going to have to be really exact (with everything) whenever xanthan gum gets involved. 2. I really should stop expecting anything to turn out quite like yeasted gluten bread, and then I'll stop being disappointed. 3. Stick to quick breads! (at least, for now.)

And on that last note... This morning I made a batch of pumpkin corn muffins (http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2006/12/pumpkin-corn-muffins.html) and they're DELICIOUS. My new favorite thing. The slight crunch from the corn meal, the cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice... mmmmmmm. I suspect corn meal will in fact be one of my staples from now on, as it's such a normal ingredient and has so much character on its own. One of the next recipes I plan to try is these cornbread muffins: http://www.glutenfreeda.com/recipe-view.asp?cat=6&id=1527 (with fake milk, of course). I'll let you know how those go, too. But I should probably finish eating this batch of muffins before I make the next one...

Snowy Day Update

Since the snow has been falling for nearly 24 hours now, and that's always an invitation to bake, I decided to go for the holy grail: gluten free yeast bread. I got out the tapioca flour, the xanthan gum, and a recipe for which I have very high hopes (http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=1396) and started mixing. The dough is resting now, so I'll have to give you an update on how it turns out.

In other news, the reason I vanished again after recently resurfacing is that I've been doing a lot of traveling and logistical business, the upshot being that I'm now back in scenic NJ and will be here for probably the next year or so.

It's a long story, and not particularly interesting, but the time has come to conclude The Nashville Experiment. The irony is that I've finally found some things in Nashville (namely a handful of people) that I'm reluctant to leave behind. But such is life, and in a couple of weeks I'll be making one brief trip back to pack up my apartment and drive the thousand miles home.

Which means... we begin the next chapter in the saga! Right now I'm hoping that this one will include things like a food processor and a large kitchen to house it. The main goal, though, is good health, and to that end I'm going to walk away from the computer, make a cup of tea, and watch the snow fall.

The view out my window this morning:


We've got about two inches on the ground, maybe a little more. The Tennessean is reporting 82 traffic 'incidents' so far today, and apparently there were 148 yesterday by some point in the afternoon. This is why I'm not leaving my apartment all weekend: 1. Tennessee does almost nothing to combat snow on the roads, and 2. no one here has the faintest idea how to drive on anything white or frozen.

I think Nashville's relationship with winter weather can be pretty well summed up by an interaction I had in December 2008, when approximately 1/4" of wet snow fell one afternoon. I was leaving my job to drive home, and one of the other tutors stopped me and said (completely seriously), "Are you sure you want to leave now? It's a blizzard out there!"

Gummmmmy

I've been getting braver with my gluten free baking experiments. I tried making the Joy of Cooking's banana bread recipe with GF flours instead of regular flour, just off the cuff as it were, and it wasn't a total failure! Just a semi-failure.

I've also been making pancakes with various GF flours to get a feel for them. Turns out that buckwheat is quite tasty and sorghum is possibly magical. I made entirely successful - delicious, even! - pancakes both with a buckwheat/millet/potato flour mix, and with straight sorghum flour. Sorghum might be my new favorite thing. (Of course some good, grade B maple syrup doesn't hurt either.)

But there's one thing I've been dreading, been avoiding like the plague, been doing research to see if I can do without. Xantham gum. (insert scary music)

Xantham gum and guar gum are the two things generally used to give GF baked goods a gluten-like texture. They are also, as I understand it, to blame for the gross, gummy texture of many GF goods. In fact, at a GF bakery in NJ the owner let me sample some bread made wtih the xanthan gum she normally uses and then a loaf made with a different brand of it: the second loaf was gummy and not so good. BECAUSE OF A DIFFERENT BRAND. This is why this stuff scares me. Guar gum, for no reason whatsoever, scares me less and is supposedly much cheaper to buy... but I haven't yet found it in a store. Xantham gum, on the other hand, sits right in the baking aisle in Whole Foods... and costs $12 for a bag that I think weighs a pound. Granted, a recipe generally uses only a teaspoon or so, but still. $12! For a little bitty bag of powder! I'm not generally in the habit of buying the kinds of things that carry that sort of cost-to-weight ratio. However, the majority of GF recipes I've been finding include the damn stuff, and the blogger/cooks I've started following (who seem quite knowledgable, based on lots and lots of experience) all include it in their recipes.

Dammit!

So this weekend I bit the bullet and bought some. ($12!!) Then I had to convince myself to use it.

Well, since store-bought GF baked products are hit-or-miss, I haven't bothered buying any pre-made cookies, cakes, or similar. It just didn't seem worth it. But for most of the last week I've been craving something starchy and sweet, warm from the oven. So I picked out two possible recipes to bake - both including xanthan gum. The one I really wanted to try was for GF monkey bread - a sweet, yeasted bread - but between getting home from the gym and leaving for work today I wasn't going to have enough time for the rising and baking, and I sure wasn't going to wait until next weekend when I'd have time to bake again. Instead I made a berry coffee cake kind of thing. (It's billed as a blueberry crumb cake, but I used the frozen mixed berries I had on hand, and was too lazy to make a proper crumb mixture so I just sprinkled brown sugar on top.)

It started smelling delicious about a half hour into the baking, and - miracle of miracles! - it tastes delicious, too!

I'm now at work with a piece of it in a plastic container and as it finishes cooling I keep taking little tastes, hunting for any hint of gummy, gluey grossness. None dectectable so far. This is good news, people. There may be some delicious baking in my future.

The best thing about being gluten free? All the amazing food I get to eat!

For someone who historically has staunchly claimed "I don't cook," I seem to be doing a lot of cooking lately.

Last night I made a Thai-style curry with broccoli and baked tofu over brown rice. As you may recall I don't usually do so well with the stove top. I knew the rice would be fine, because I bake it in the oven. (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/baked-brown-rice-recipe/index.html - it comes out perfect every time.) I also had faith in the tofu, for the first time ever, because I've finally given up on frying it and just bake it in pieces on a cookie sheet instead. But putting it all together, and getting the curry sauce to taste good... I wasn't sure how that would go.

I oversteamed the broccoli slightly, so that wasn't a great way to start. And the sweet potato that I'd been planning to include got so soft when I cooked it in the microwave that it was hopeless. Awesome. But then some sort of minor culinary miracle occurred, and when I cooked and onion with some ginger, poured in coconut milk from a can, added some fish sauce and tamari based on a recipe I was too lazy to follow, and assembled the whole megillah in a bowl... it was delicious! Success!

After that came the recipe I knew would be problematic only in my desire to eat its entire product in one sitting: flourless chocolate chip peanut butter cookies. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cooking/msg0407471826546.html - about halfway down the page is the version I made, using agave nectar. And adding chocolate chips, of course. Spectacular. I will have to make rules about how often I'm allowed to bake these.

That was where I stopped last night, but this afternoon there's gonna be more fun. I'm making crustless quiche cups and stir fried cabbage with carrots and bean sprouts.

As soon as my brand new immersion blender arrives (I had too much to carry on the plane back from NJ), I'll be starting on my list of soup recipes, and I've got a stack of other rice and/or potato based recipes to try. Plus I have to investigate the whole quinoa situation...

I foresee one major problem in the near future: running out of freezer space.

The Office, v. LRC

I've just started a new part time job, and for the pay-to-effort ratio it's one of the best jobs I've ever had. Maybe THE best job. Not when you consider other factors, of course, like contributing to society or helping the human race in some fashion, but I'm enjoying what I've got.

I sit and surf the internet. Or read books. Or get work done. And maybe once every two or three hours I walk into a room, put a DVD in a player, and press play. Or take it out, put it back in the case, and turn off the lights. Does it get any better?

This has gotten me thinking about other jobs I've had, both good and bad. I don't think I'll do an in-depth study of each, but here's a bit of a highlight reel of the last however-many years:

- I served wine in tiny plastic cups and scooped brownies out of a tray.
- I played a 16 year old track star (trust me, this is hilarious) in a touring, anti-smoking propaganda play.
- I worked for a maniac.
- I worked for someone who barely spoke.
- I worked at a place where I had nowhere to sit for a week so they put me in an office with no phone and no computer, where all I could do was sit and wait for someone to give me papers to file.
- I've taught calculus. Oh yes.
- I once learned a programming language so I could write scripts for the web pages I was learning how to build.
- I babysat for a lot of children - some lovely, some definitely not.
- I stood on a street corner handing out pamphlets to passersby.
- I stood on a different street corner handing out water and energy beans to marathoners in training.
- I sat for eight hours a day and read. (Mostly.)

...and I'm sure there are more that aren't immediately coming to mind. But for my age, I feel this is a decent list of odd ways of having made a paycheck.

What are some good, bad, or just plain weird jobs you've had?