In the Moment Chili

My friend Jane, as is her custom, demanded that I blog the recipe that I mentioned in my Facebook post this evening. She is a tireless advocate for transparency in cooking, and has on several occasions forced me, despite my reticence, to give up the secrets that have made my cooking so remarkable. So, while I sit on the couch waiting for the above chili to simmer, I will do my best to share with all of you, the legions of devoted readers, how to make my version of "In The Moment Chili."

The cornbread I make is probably like any other one you might make yourself. 2 cups cornmeal (local and stone ground if you can get it....if you use horse-powered you win,) followed by 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, more salt than you think, some pepper, followed by 2 eggs, about 1.75 cups of buttermilk, and a glug of maple syrup. Mix this all together, but don't over mix it, and then let it sit for 10-12 minutes while you do this below.

Here's the important part: You need a cast iron skillet that's about 100 years old, and that belonged to your great grandmother who lived in Atlanta your whole life in a house that you loved. If you don't have this, another cast iron skillet will do, but you know I can't promise anything. Put 3-4 tablespoons of butter, and big swirl of canola oil in the skillet, and then put it in an oven that you preheated to 400 degrees. Let the skillet get very hot in the oven, melting the butter and heating the oil. When you pour the batter in, it should sizzle. Then leave it in the oven about 20-22 minutes. When it take it out, turn the cornbread upside down on a plate, and let it cool. If you want to, you can drizzle over some melted butter, or, if you have it, some hot pepper maple syrup, like I did.

It's called In the Moment Chili because that's really what it is--it's whatever you have plus whatever you feel like. Taste it every time you add something, and see what your mood asks for--more heat, more acid, more salt. So, tonight, my version went like this:

• 3 small onions, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
  
• 1 lb. ground pork
• 2 chopped chipotle chiles
• 2 cans crushed tomatoes
• 1 cup of water
  
• 1 big can black beans
• 1 big can small red beans
• 1 sweet potato, cubed
• lots of salt
• juice of two limes
• big shake of ground coriander, some oregano, some curry powder, 2 shakes of cayenne.
• a bit of garlic powder
• Secret ingredients: 1/2 cup of cocoa powder, plus one mug of coffee.

So, you do all of this like you think you would--onions & garlic in some olive oil, plus pork, and then so on down the list, and then you let it simmer until it's super thick and delicious. I like to be able to stand a spoon up in the middle of the pot. Like this:


How you serve it is really up to you--I like a big chunk of cornbread in the bottom of a bowl, then pour two scoops of chili on top, then put some shredded cheddar. Be generous with everything--it's a bowl of chili, and it's Sunday night, right?

Gorilla-At-Large

Thanks to my tireless and wonderful mother, these very very old stories of mine are finally seeing the light. At some point, I would sit and dictate to her and she wrote down whatever I said. Behold, Gorilla-at-Large:

Doubling-Back

After Kip's birthday two weeks ago, a bunch of us ended up at Odessa, eating potato pancakes, kielbasa, and peirogis, and drinking beer. There were too many of us to sit at a single table, so we split into two, our table talking mostly about theater--shows we did and didn't like, the great performances of 2010, Patti vs. Bernadette. I think we bored Joe. Sorry, Joe. I thought to myself: Please let it be like this for the rest of my life. I really did think that.

It felt like old times. When I first moved to New York, my roommates and I always ended up at Odessa, or Veselka, or Kate's Joint, after having seen something (good or great or bad) at Theater for the New City, or PS122, or The Ontological-Hysteric. Or somewhere else. Then, the long--it seemed at the time--ride home on the F Train to Astoria. We felt like part of the culture. We were part of the culture.

I admit, I'm getting sentimental. Later the same week, I watched the Martin Scorsese documentary "Public Speaking," which is about Fran Lebowitz. Fran talked (among other brilliant things) about the richness of audiences back in the day--about how they demanded the best, every single time, because they had seen everything. In Patti Smith's "Just Kids," which I was also reading at the time, she writes about the opportunities artists had in the 60s and 70s. Opportunities that could never be now.

My tendency is to think that all this nostalgia is just, well, that. But then, we went to see the revival of "Angels in America," and during the intermissions of "Perestroika," the couple sitting next to us talked on and on about how the liked or didn't like the various choices that the characters were making. He said "I don't know any of these performers." His date (sister? friend? girlfriend?) said: "I hate plays like this where everyone is just talking." I felt a bit deflated.

It's a good thing that the play is a masterpiece. It lifted me back up. The Signature Theater's production is terribly, terribly good--even if one wonder's if Zoe Kazan's earthy strength is right for Harper, and why Christian Borle seemed to be playing everything so weird to me, or if, as my agent wrote, "why Joe seemed to be given the most unhappy ending. Well...besides Roy." Zachary Quinto's performance as Louis is nuanced and obvious at the same time--his technical skills are sometimes on the outside, and I liked that about it. The thing is, though, all these things make the play, the experience of being in the theater with a piece as fucking brilliant and difficult and striving as Kushner's, and actors as sharp and skillful as this ensemble, more exciting. It was really, truly fantastic.

The rest of this story is about me noting how everything seems to be talking to itself. Novelists recognize this as a message from the universe that it's time to get serious. Or, at least, I do. This kind of doubling back, these overlapping strains of thought are your subconscious trying to tell you something about what you're thinking about. Your job is to translate that into the work. Not that it's easy.

The second novel has been such a struggle. Huge roller coaster emotions, false-starts, insecurities. It must be going just like the first one went, but I don't remember making the first one that much. Really. It just kind of came out of me, boom, like a sad, confused hustler bursting out of a party cake the shape of a rain-soaked New York City. (Lol?) And for the last three years before it was published, there was 250 pages of it--lots of clay, as it were. When I sat down to work with it, there was lots to work with. This new thing is still a mess, stretched out in too many directions, too many characters that don't know what their stories are. Sometimes I don't know how I'm going to do it. No, really. I feel like I might explode. I feel like I'm going crazy.

I try to feel buoyed up by the life around me. But we're so close to the edge of crazy, we're right on the other side of this thin membrane. I feel totally pressed against it sometimes. It's a good thing there are so many things to keep us, the collective us, together. Friends who, half-drunk, say things like "Would Arthur Laurents just go ahead and die already?" And Kip. And potato pancakes and vegan turkey sandwiches at Kate's. And the F-Train. And Fran Lebowitz and Tony Kushner. And Patti Smith. And Patti vs. Bernadette.

(Who are we kidding? Bernadette, all the way.)

Poem for the Singer

Like cards from a trick deck,
you deal yourself out to me
in measured, calculated hands.
As if gambling was too rich for you.
As if slight of hand was your trade.

Tossing away all these
un-nervy feelings, these,
what do you call them, low-Richter stuff,
like a boring receipt, or a toothpaste cap,
would be a silly, silly thing, I know.

So, I keep them,
wadded like a gum wrapper,
or filed like last year's daybook.
Things you are sure will come in handy
in the very near future.

Covers 2010

I'm taking a vacation from the blog, returning in mid-January. So, in the meantime, here's a new bunch of covers to enjoy when the radio only wants to play Christmas Music.

DOWNLOAD HERE.

Includes:

-Another Day in Paradise, by Copeland
-Fall on Me, by Cry Cry Cry
-Folsom Prison Blues, by Brandi Carlisle
-Lovestoned, by Kaki King
-Walking in Memphis, by Cher
-Angel from Montgomery, by Ani Difranco
-All is Full of Love, by Death Cab for Cutie
-Anyone Who Had a Heart, by Shelby Lynne
-Black Star, by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
-What You Are, by Joan Osborne
-Crying, by k.d. Lang
-Stairway to Heaven, by Dolly Parton
-Sea Lion Woman (piano), by Feist

Yelping / Chinese / Eyeballs at Xmastime

Kip woke on Monday morning in a kind of yelping terror that lasted only a few seconds, which he has done on a few other occasions. This time, due to the cat--the one that normally sleeps on my head all night--dug a claw into his arm. Not aggressively, not out of fear. This was the cat's strategy for getting his attention. Thinking: If he wakes, he will give me food. The yelping makes me wonder what deep ravines Kip was wandering when the clawing occurred. How dreadful to be jerked awake like that. And of course, as he was, so was I. (These are the new horrors of the otherwise lovely co-habitation.)

Later I ended up at M. Shanghai in South Williamsburg for dinner. Who knew that there was really, really good Chinese food to be had in a weirdo bar-ish joint on Grand Street? Apparently, the whole n'hood, as the joint was hopping on a Monday night. If you go, have the scallion pancake, the chicken shumai, and the crispy chicken in ginger and spicy sauce. Dang the food was good. Drinks came cheap-ish, too.

I met a woman there, she had recently lost her father, and I recognized in her the kind of unmoored openness that sort of grief imparts. Or maybe I didn't, maybe it's unfair to presume that I could "see" anything in her. But...We begun the evening making small talk about small talk. We talked about what happens when you meet a stranger, how inevitably someone will say "Nice to meet you," and we generally want to ask "Really? Is it really though?" We decided that even small talk has its charms, even if both of you know how meaningless it is in terms of context, the ritual is meaningful. And, of course, you can have wonderful meetings like this one. We remarked on that as well. How it actually was nice to meet each other.

What does it mean that I am attracted to this kind of grief, or, more precisely, that I want to return to it over and over in my work? Does it mean anything? There is a certain clarity in the madness grief creates, a kind of obsession that fuels and comforts my obsessive nature. The ability to return to images over and over, the overlapping of feelings, the outsiders perspective, amplified. I guess this is what interests me: the translation and transformation of the otherwise standard experience. And I think it reflects what I believe to be true, that we are all so very, very close to the edge.

I've discovered, in my not that many years writing, but enough to know what I'm talking about, I think, that I keep returning to loss over and over. I write about things leaving us. People, objects, memories, families, previous selves. This sounds a bit morose, maybe. I don't think of it that way. It's just where I am lately.

Tonight I am taking my friend Robert Maril (AKA DJ Executive Realness) to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. I saw it a few years ago, and I think we decided at the time that we would go every three years or so. The time is now. Robert has never been to see it, and I am excited to have the same experience relived through someone new--another thing I am obsessed with. (Does this reveal something about my control freakishness?) I told Robert: "Are you ready for your eyeballs to be raped by the spirit of Christmastime?" He said he was. Hooray.

Some Almost-Winter Pictures

Week-End Happenings

This week was the first real cold at the Greenmarket--highs in the low 40s. So began the flood of questions about "When does the market end for the season?" It doesn't, and sometimes I think we wear it as a badge of honor, even though it wrecks our bodies for a few days after. And we're not even to January yet, where it can be a high of 25 degrees. I loathe it, and I vow to fight it, and win. I finally understand what's important about how the farmer's greet each other in the spring: "How was your winter?" Because surviving it is a big deal. This will be my fifth winter out there. Some of the farmer's, this will be their thirtieth. I'm lucky to be a part of it all.

On Saturday, I bought a Christmas tree from the guys over at Trumansburg Tree Farms. The guy that sold it to me, whose name I have forgotten, or forgot to get in the first place, admitted that he, like me, and like lots of us, aren't really the farmers. "I live in Brooklyn," he said. "Me too," I told him. "What else do you do?" he asked me, because everyone at the market does something else. "I'm a writer," I said. (I am still new to this answer, but I am trying to own it. Writer in 2011!) "Like everybody in Brooklyn," he laughed. "No," I said, "I really am one."

And then he tied the tree up, folding its branches toward the top, shrinking it into a kind of bundled Fraser Fir joint. (I like the Fraser the best, or a Balsam, but check out these others.) As he was tying the tree he said, "What would make a tree want to do this, fold up like this, what evolutionary purpose does it serve?" We joked a few minutes about how God made them that way, so that we could celebrate his son's birth in style, and we'd need a good way to carry the trees home with us. I don't think this is very funny now, but we seemed to think it was then.

On Sunday morning, Kip and I had brunch at Casmir, a French bistro-type place, with flavors by way of Morocco. Joining us, it was their idea actually, was my friends Pam and Rachel, and their new baby, who is five months old. I like kids, don't get me wrong, but why are people who have kids weirded-out when Kip and I say so resolutely that we do not plan to have, nor want, children of our own? I suspect I know the answer to this, or answers. But I have noticed it a lot lately, as we, I mean I, have reached the age when all the people around you begin to have children or get married, or move away, or move in. Brunch was lovely. I'm happy that Pam and I have stayed more or less in touch over the years, and even happier that one of the pleasures of living is seeing your friends grow into themselves. Also, I am happy for spicy-tomato sauce with feta, capers and eggs.

Later on Sunday, we decorated the tree, which I both like to do and hate to do. I have a short attention span as it is, and a habit of entering long, dark tunnels of sentimental memory, so bringing one ornament after another out of bag after bag and box after box--it can really wear me out. But it got done, thanks to Kip. He is good at making the most out of anything, and I am good at reigning it in at he last moment so that it doesn't become, you know, the most. The tree really is fantastic.

This week, I'm cooking and prepping for our big party on Sunday night: lemon marshmallows, foie gras with sauternes gelée, pork pies, spiced ricotta tartines, pheasant sausage with Madeira, curried peanut dip, mushroom strudel, roasted tomatillo guacamole....and of course, Kip's famous hand-decorated cookies. Maybe I'll see what else I can cook up.

25 Things I'm Thankful For

Ted made a list, inspiring me to do the same.

1) That I was wrong about thinking I shouldn't move in with my boyfriend.
2) A warm bed filled with my kitties.
3) Art on every wall, everywhere.
4) The complicated relationship to your writing that being published creates.
5) Good reviews.
6) New York City's utter, unflappable, inspiring awesomeness.
7) Kip.
8) Kip's patience with my everything.
9) Friends who live very close by.
10) Parents who get it.
11) Central Air.
12) The Greenmarket community.
13) My editor & my agent. Because everyone said that Yield wasn't publishable except for them, and turns out, it was.
14) That I have a desk job where I can iChat with Cory and Robert and Jeff.
15) That Howie made enough of the best maple syrup in the world to keep me employed another year.
16) Complicated questions that people ask and struggle to answer well.
17) The DVR.
18) Antibiotics.
19) The MoMA, The Met Museum, The Whitney, The Guggenheim, etc.
20) Jokes.
21) The Theater Development Fund.
22) The incredible bounty of local food.
23) Poets.
24) Homosexuals.
25) Having friends in so many lines of work: dentists, psychotherapists, drummers, photographers, teachers, graphic designers, fashion thinkers, singers, DOT workers, performers, artists, writers, journalists, bartenders, farmers, waiters, chefs, lawyers, zine-makers, dancers, yoga teachers, real estate agents, puppeteers, activists, old folks home managers, playwrights, actors, film editors, sound technicians, and circus performers.

Joanna Newsom at Carnegie Hall

Few of us know anyone who plays the harp; basically none of us have been near enough to touch one. Part of the success of Joanna Newsom's show last night at Carnegie Hall has to do with the kind of magic that an instrument like that creates. The posture in the player--this kind of open, holding, wide elbowed stance--combined with the mystery of the dozens (and from the balcony it seemed there could be hundreds) of strings, and finally the strange fact that its difficult to determine when the player is actually touching the harp, and when the sound is simply vibrating out of it. Only in close up, does any of it make any sense.

Less successful, and ultimately what made the evening feel a bit like a deflated exercise, was Newsom's ambiguous relationship to her audience, and the awkward moments of harp-tuning, which left enough blank space that, upon Newsom's suggestion, the audience began shouting out "questions." "Brooklyn loves you," someone said. This is interesting to me, because I have a feeling that most of the people in the audience had traveled from Brooklyn. Was he sending a collective message? Sent from the "better" borough? (There is a feeling among young hip people that Brooklyn rocks and Manhattan is square.) Was this person unconsciously indicating a kind of sentimental otherness?

This went on twice for not long, three or four minutes perhaps, but the energy lagged, and I wished that the band, or Newsom herself, had prepared some kind of other business for this moment--comedy, a story, talking, banter, anything. If anyone has seen Alison Krauss and Union Station perform, you will know that they are always tuning, but they have created many "bits" to do during this boring, and stagnant tuning sections, which bring the audience back into the show. Sure, it feels casual when they do it, never calculated, but AKUS would never, ever, allow their audience to set, or shift, the mood of those moments. Maybe this comes with having performed on stage together for 20 years--a luxury Newsom and her band does not have--a kind of seasoned, professional ease.

"Can I play Ryan's banjo?" one audience member yelled, during this tuning/question section. "No," said, Neal Morgan, on percussion. He then asked the audience to have a kind of meta-moment where we imagine her playing while she actually didn't, and then he counted out 5 seconds of quiet, while we all listened. Ultimately, this is kind of asshole-ish, taking the, yes, stupid question "Can I play Ryan's banjo" and then making the extra large point of showing the audience how stupid the question is, by extrapolating its stupidity by making us all engage in a similarly stupid interaction. More stupid does not counteract stupid.

Early in the evening, Newsom spoke of her nervousness, how it wasn't until she got on stage for the sound check that she realized, okay, Carnegie Hall may be Carnegie Hall, but it's just a room with the most incredible acoustics. Joanna, hello, it's not just a room. Tell that to Sissieretta Jones, or Marian Anderson. Or Judy Garland. Or any of the thousands of amateur musicians who would kill to get on that stage. At the same time, however, her fans do not see her as the girl at the party: "What does it feel like to be a goddess?" screamed one fan from a few rows away from where I was sitting. Morgan responded: "Trick question, Joanna actually isn't a goddess." This was too clear.

I think she could be. Her music, as beautiful, ethereal, strange, unstructured, long, wandering, so different from anything else you hear--where was all that in the show? It was there in the songs, sure, but something else seemed missing. Even the long-winded biography printed in the playbill was reductionist, made to seem as if, ho hum, Joanna was playing harp in her basement and then, oh wow, people liked it, and thanks to a lot of illegal downloading and enough actual sales, now here she is.

Do young musicians in this new-folk scene refuse to take themselves that seriously? Does a kind of formal live presentation reduce your hipster street cred? These were the questions I wanted to ask.