I made a couple of cakes for Rhinebeck.  I think I mentioned.  I love them both, but one is particularly important to me in the larger scheme of things, because it comes down to me from a ways off.  Coincidentally, it’s also the cake that got the most compliments and recipe requests.  I can’t tell you how happy that made me.  A restaurant near our house used to serve a cake almost identical to this one.  The owners’ Mom made it.  She was from Naples.  She stopped making the cake because she was getting on in years and her sons wanted her to take it easy, so we basically don’t go to the restaurant anymore.  Good Bolognese I can make with a little effort.  Lasagna–I don’t want it if someone else makes it.  Chicken Parm–ffffffft, who can’t do that?  This cake?  It takes work.  And it tastes best when a Grandma makes it.  It just does. 

My maternal grandmother, Potensia Florence Marcone, was the child of Italian immigrants.  Her mother, Antoinette, was by all accounts an amazing cook and was a restaurateur for a time in Pittsburgh, where she and her husband settled.  Her mother, Sarafina, made this cake, as did Antoinette, according to my Grandmother.  I was apparently supposed to be named after Sarafina, as she had been named after her great-great, but no one told my Mom in time.  Some family traditions are easily lost.  This cake hasn’t been, though we came close.  It’s apparently very common in Naples, but I’ve looked over other recipes for this cake, and I’m sure that they are all crap compared to ours.   If you ever tell me otherwise, I will be forced to smack you, or at least take my cake out of your hands. 

My grandmother hated to make this cake, and just talked wistfully about it to me when I was a kid, hoping somehow to conjure one up out of thin air.  She was a good cook, but she didn’t like to cook.  She was a kitchen martyr.  No one else could make it, because Antoinette had only left the recipe with her one daughter.  That last sentence–that’s a common and heartbreaking sentence in our family.  "Remember that tortellini Antoinette used to make?  In was amazing!  How come you don’t make that ever?"  "Because she wouldn’t give the recipe to anyone but Flo after Si Anni published that Wedding Soup recipe in the paper.  None of us know what’s in it."  Eventually, Grandma found the cake recipe in her mother’s things, and about a decade later I got Antoinette and Potensia Florence’s cookbooks as a bridal gift.  I cried and cried and cried over them at the shower, as the women in my family knew I would.  And then I started getting gentle, persistent demands for the cake.  They’ll forgive me if I never have a child, but if I stop making this cake, I might have to look elsewhere for a family reunion to attend.

Now to business: this cake could easily be made safe for folks with wheat and gluten allergies or for people with dairy allergies–the flour can be replaced with almond flour and the butter with some vegetable spray.  It must never be made sans eggs or almond paste though, so folks with egg or nut allergies and aversions are out of luck.

Also, I am retrospectively terrified of my Great- and Great-great-Grandmothers.  I’ve made this cake many times, and I consider it to be a fairly demanding recipe.  I use a kitchen-aid, a very good copper bowl and a great whisk, and occasionally a hand-mixer if my arms are messed up.  They did it without any electric gadgets.  They would have been great arm wrestlers, I tell you what.  In other words, be prepared to either get out the small appliances or get in shape, or you’re not finishing this recipe.

Sarafina’s Almond Cake ( a.k.a Napolitan Almond Cake or Italian Almond sponge cake)

1 tablespoon butter
8 oz. almond paste, cut into small pieces
6 eggs, room temperature, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 to 1 teaspoon almond extract (Omit this if Simone wants to eat some cake.  Use 1/2 teaspoon for regular folks.  Use a full teaspoon if Mary wants to eat the whole cake)
pinch of salt
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup cake flour (substitute almond flour if you have wheat allergies or if you are making the cake for Mary)
1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat your oven to 350 Fahrenheit.  If your oven is not well-behaved, get an over thermometer and make sure your temperature is true.  This cake is held up by eggs.

Butter a 9-inch spring-form pan.

Beat together the almond paste and the egg yolks, and then add in the extracts.  Edited to add . . .Add the flour in stages, stirring just enough to incorporate.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they reach soft peaks.  Slowly add the sugar to the egg whites, as you continue beating the egg whites.  Beat the whites until they reach stiff peaks, but be careful not to over-beat them (which would leave them dry and horrible, and require you to start over, and possibly cry).

Fold a small amount of the egg whites into the egg yolk and almond mixture to lighten it.  Then fold in the rest of the egg whites.  Fold carefully–you want to maintain the loft of the egg whites, but you want the batter to be thoroughly blended. 

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 30 minutes.  The sides of the cake will pull away from the pan when it’s almost done, and it should be lovely and golden. 

Cool the cake thoroughly.  The cake will have puffed up in the oven, but will fall a bit as it cools.  Do not be sad–it’s supposed to fall a bit as it cools.  You’ll know all is right when you cut the cake.  It’s a true sponge cake–bouncy and moist and downright wonderful.  I’ve never had it go wrong. 

Serve with Creme Anglais (my favorite way), with whipped cream, with raspberry sauce, with dark chocolate shavings, or just with a nice coffee or glass of port. 

All sorts of beginnings, and thus endings.  Samhain marks the new year in the Celtic calendar.  And the Day of the Dead is coming.   I’ve been consciously trying to slow down lately, and it’s hard for me.  So I started all sorts of new projects, but I rationalized such behavior as rational and good, since new beginnings are appropriate at this time of year.  Right?  Right.

I’ve worn the Irish Twist cardigan in public, which is quite a first.  Never worn a sweater I’ve made before, me.  It is firmly ensconced in my wardrobe now.  Safe from the flames.  Sorry, dear friends who were banking on me doing my usual thing and giving it away.  This girl’s a keeper, at least for a few years.  Woot.

A new sweater for my husband is in the works.  He’s settled on Beau from Rowan, which will be perfect for him.  (Ignore the idiotic pose there–Scott will never, ever pose like that, or wear a hat like that, or, well, be the sort of goofball Rowan seems to find perfect in male models.)  The suggested yarn isn’t going to work though, because it’s too scratchy.  So I’ve been polling the knitters and searching for alternatives, and now we just need to find the correct combination of weight, color, and texture.  Ooh, and buttons.  Buttons will be fun.

I’ve also frogged the ground-up-clown socks, rescued the needles, and started a new pair of knee socks out of a much prettier trekking colorway.  It’s the marled blues, and I heart it.  I will be knitting these particular socks for the rest of my life, of course, but I will be knitting them happily.   Not true for the previous denizens of said sock needles.

And, I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and started a mitred-square afghan using leftover sock yarns.  I will remain firm, and will not buy yarn to add to this project.  I will only use scraps and cast-offs.  I will, of course, use the ground-up-clown, because it won’t be much fun to use for socks once I’ve cut out the offending sections.

Finally, in the spirit of new years and beginnings and birthday wishes and all of that pap, I’ve made a bit of a deal with some friends, and I’m going to throw it out to you all too.  I’m a writer, but I don’t write enough and I certainly don’t pursue publication as I should.  It’s embarrassing to finish a story-telling or bardic performance and have to say no to people who ask for books or CDs because I just haven’t honestly tried to make a CD or get a book published.  I’ve had to turn would-be patrons away a few times now, and it’s downright ridiculous.  I’ve only submitted one piece for publication in the last year and a half or so, and while I certainly was pleased when it was published, well, that’s a crappy rate of submission.  I let everything else come before my writing, and I have for ages.  No more.

Right, so, I told a funny story, a story of a first of sorts, to some lovely people late Saturday night at Rhinebeck, and I think and they thought it was pretty funny.  They could have just liked the cake and the wine . . . . Jayme, Janet, and I got to talking about writing the next day, and I made all sorts of ridiculous excuses, caught myself, and asked them to give me crap if I don’t write something down.  And then I asked Rachel to give me crap if I don’t write.  So I’m going to write down that little story and try to get it published.  If I don’t, please call me on it.  Shame is a powerful and effective tool against me.  It really is.  And I’m inviting you to use it.   Just this once.

Edited to add:  Wheeeee!  I won some gorgeous Alpaca from the Blogger Bingo prize pool.  Wheeeeeee!  I never win anything in drawings.  Wheeeeeee!  Thank you so much, Continue Reading »

I know, we are bad bloggers and we’ve been neglecting dear Seamus.  The world got very fast.  But Rachel just told me that my boy Paul Muldoon is on the cover of Poets and Writers magazine.  Yayyyyy.  Go see, go see: his hat is quite stylish.

Dear reader, you may not know of this particular crazy thing I have with magazines.  Wait, I take that back.  There are three people here, max, and Rachel knows my crazy thing with magazines, and I bet our Poe-loving friend does too, after hanging around Knitter’s Review with us lo these many months.  The crazy: I think magazines are evil, because they waste so much paper and shipping them to subscribers wastes so much fuel, particularly when you consider how many people subscribe to magazines they never actually read.  I say waste because, unlike books, magazines are mostly unreadable crap like ads.  You know it’s true, you Cosmo buyers, and you folks who buy National Geographic just to put it on your table.  But this one may rank a spot on my shelf.  Let’s see if I can meet a copy in person. 

In the meantime, let me plead once again–you magazine publishers–let me read your magazine, in its entirety, online, for a fee.  And let me save a few choice articles or print knitting patterns, within reason.  It will benefit us both, and it benefits the whole blessed planet.  Come on. You can do it!  Just look at the Washington Post–they made themselves available for free on the web, and it’s great.  Heck, I would give them money for the service if I could just get them to understand that I don’t ever want the paper copy, ever ever ever.  They haven’t accepted my terms yet.

Ooh, and I got three good bits of poetry for my birthday. 
Thou Harp of My Music translated by some other weirdos
The Book of the Angel by Medbh McGuckian
And a little something from Nikki Giovanni that isn’t in stores yet, thanks to Rachel.  I studied with Nikki when I was in college at tech, so I have the extra pleasure of really hearing her voice in my head when I read her work.  I recommend the experience highly–she has a great voice and is a really good reader.  Listen to Nikki, folks.  And go buy a book of poetry. 

So, it’s birthday season.  Scott is a year and four days older than I am, and our friend Mikele’s birthday falls right before ours, and Alan’s is right after, and then Nessa, and I can’t even name everyone else who is in the October string of birthdays.

I think I did a particularly good job finding one of my presents to Scott.

It’s a Mongolian chess board.  No, I didn’t make it.  But now that I’ve met one, I want to start doing the felt work for them.  The carving isn’t in my grasp though, so I’d need to gang up with someone.  That’s a felt tube, decorated by pressing hot irons against the wool.  Inside:

The board is another piece of burned felt, and the pieces are carved of clay, fired, and hand-painted.  The pawns are turtles,

the queens are lions,

and the bishops are camels.

Scott gave me another lunikeit, this one all silver.

The discs have stags in them–I haven’t been able to get a clear close-up of them, but they’re lovely.

My gift to myself was a trip to Rhinebeck with my friends Jayme and Janet.  It was wonderful.  I missed being home with my fellow October-babies, since we often get together around now.  But the festival was amazing.  I’ll tell you about it later.

My other present to myself is finally complete.

This second picture, with flash, gives a better idea of the color.

I wanted to wear it to the festival on Saturday, but the last bit of the pattern was giving me fits.  I broke up with this sweater over and over again at the end, and threatened it with immolation.  We’ve come to an understanding, though.  I was able to crochet the sleeves in once I got home–I have yet to become one with a crochet hook, so it takes more concentration than I can muster while surrounded by fun.  It fits well, it’s warm, the color is gorgeous, and I may actually keep it.

Mike and Tara took me to see Bruce Molsky as an early birthday present last night.  It was amazing.  I’ve blathered before  about the musicianship to be found in Old-Time.  I think Bruce leads the bunch.  Since he was playing solo last night, he really had a chance to show his range.  Fiddle, banjo, guitar, singing–and all of it so good.  As usual, I feel a bit cruel gushing about a show that the vast majority of people had no access to.  And, as usual, I’ll encourage you to go see Bruce play live if he comes to your town, and to buy his CDs, and to support live music, dammmmit.  I’m betting Tara will post her excellent photos soon, and maybe even a snippet or two of Bruce’s excellent playing and singing.  Fingers crossed.

As promised, I picked up the mystery loom this weekend from the wonderful Yorkses.  It’s a Leclerc Inca (scroll down), and therefore French Canadian.  I want to celebrate with excellent cheeses, and, er, tell me what else I should do to celebrate the loom in a French-Canadian manner . . . I’m far more prepared to celebrate things Nova Scotian. 

It’s still in pieces, but I have the manual, so I should be able to get it put together soon.  A bit of TLC will be required–there’s some rust on the reed.  And then I’ll have to get my friend Carol to teach me how larger looms function. 

I figured that I should bring a bit of wool entertainment with me to the Yorkses’, so I brought the goods to make felted soap and pincushions with the kidlets.  What a hit!  Chip and AnnaMarie had spent much of the day painting their house (she’s becoming a painted lady, Mathom’s End is), and they had to call it quits and get their hands into the wool too, of course.  I brought piles of Peace Fleece rovings and some nice handmade soaps I picked up at Maryland Sheep and Wool.  Many soaps were covered, pincushions were made, everyone ended up with very clean hands, and then we had no choice but to celebrate our creativity by jumping on the trampoline.  And as if they hadn’t done enough for me already, AnnaMarie presented me with a book on plants in Scots-Gaelic she’d picked up in Portland.  My language geeking went off the scale.  As usual, I had more than my share of fun and it was very hard to leave.    Sigh. 

And finally, the emerald green mohair cabled cardigan is very close to completion, so I should be able to wear it on Saturday to Rhinebeck.  I need to knit a few more inches of the last sleeve, block, assemble, and add the neck and button bands.  And choose buttons.  I think I can get there. 

My progress was impeded significantly after the show last night when a freaking madman started talking to me on the Metro and Would.  Not.  Stop.  <long sigh / > I let my freak flag fly, as a rule, so I’m used to people noticing things about my clothes or jewelry that single me out as "anti-establishment" or whatever.  I was wearing a lunikeit, like I do, and an Irish handmade spirally felt coat, like I do, and knitting, like I do.  So when the seemingly-sane man asked politely what I was making,  I answered politely that I was knitting a sleeve.  He seemed nice enough, and wasn’t drooling or trying to touch me, but I could kinda tell, you know?  He was trying a bit too hard to dress like Johnny Depp and couldn’t decide between the Edward Scissorhands look and the Jack Sparrow look.  So he asked if I was tied into the local Celtic community, and I said yes.  And he mentioned a friend of a friend of a friend we had in common and I luckily retained a bit of my natural aloof stance and didn’t volunteer too much info. . .  small talk small talk, "I’m happily married" "Oh, your husband is such a lucky man" yes-yes-but-you’re-creeping-me-out-stranger-I-am-going-over-here-now-without-you-been-a-long-day  small talk. 

And then . . . and then he started explaining that it’s really good that he is such a high level warlock so he can deal with his pregnant 3,000 year-old witch girlfriend.  Because she is very angry.  Because she was once burned at the stake.  And it’s his fault, see, because he’s part Italian, and thus (not my logic–his) responsible for the Spanish Inquisition.  And the real danger is that she is having a girl, and mother and child together are likely to burn him alive once they don’t need him anymore.  Yada yada yada.

I see.  I was a deer in headlights, lemmetellya.  It was fascinating, his crazy-as-a-shithouse-bat monologue.  Fascniating in its insanity.  To compound the oddity of his statements, he said it all with no sense of irony, doubt, or concern in his voice.  He had no doubt I would believe every word of it, and seemed truly shocked when I said I’d heard quite enough and needed to knit in peace.  If I hadn’t heard the words he was saying, I could have assumed he was talking about a rather boring football game.  The flat affect–it was strange.  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s all true, and would-be-Depp is locked in a heroic magical battle with his deranged but loving gal.  I’m not going to visit their happy home to find out.   And I’m not taking whatever he took, man.  Sheesh. It’s Monday night, man.  Gotta go to work in the morning, you know, lay off the pills.  And pick–Edward or Jack.  Not both.   True style requires decisiveness.

So, by way of a quick update, I’ve started the first sleeve for my Rhinebeck-bound sweater, and I’m happy enough with the back and the fronts.  I may need to bend some time to finish it by Thursday.  Particularly because of, well . . .

A while ago, I was hanging out with AnnaMarie at her brother’s place for the annual pool party celebrating nephew Brandon’s birthday.  Have I mentioned that my group of friends is full of siblings and old friends and we’ve all slowly married each other’s best buddies and entangled our community very tightly?  I’ve known Scott since I was 17, and we’re one of the "newly-met" couples because people remember a time before we met, let alone a time before we were together.  Anyway, AnnaMarie’s parents were at said party, and all of the kidlets were running about in a high state of cuteness, and the adult beverages were flowing, and AnnaMarie’s Mom was teasing her kids about dropping off truckloads of stuff she didn’t want anymore in their driveways, since she had stored their crap for years and now it was payback time.  We’ve all had similar conversations with our parents, right?  And then AnnaMarie said a rather impressive thing to me:

"My Mom has a floor loom she’s not using.  So she brought it to my house.  I don’t know how to weave on it, and I don’t have any room for it.  You want it on long-term loan?"

I think some margarita shot out of my nose about then.  And then maybe I jumped up and down a lot.  As some of you may know, I keep saving for a loom, and then my duplicitous truck gets jealous and requires expensive repairs, and then I have to start saving again, and then maybe I lock myself in a closet to whimper about it.  Just maybe. 

And then a loom fell from the sky into my pocket.  It a figurative sense, of course–no hospitalization required and no smashed looms.  And then I had some actual big thinking to do.

We live in a pretty small house, so I’ve been wrestling with the "where the hell am I going to put a floor loom" questions.  But AnnaMarie has gently prodded me with the "Weren’t you saving for a floor loom?" questions, and also the "I don’t have any room for a loom either, you know, so come get this thing and make me stuff" statements. 

So maybe, just maybe, a floor loom will come to stay with me this weekend.  I think it will have to live in our bedroom.  I have no idea what kind of loom it is, though it’s apparently some sort of four-jack. 

I think I may just swoon.

My sweater feels betrayed.

The First Verse by Barry Mccrea.

This is a pretty impressive first novel.  It follows Niall, a young student from Sandycove, Dublin as he enters university at Trinity College Dublin to study French and English as a Beckett scholar.  So, of course, I was going to read this no matter what.  The book traces through one of my favorite cities, in the neighborhoods I used to haunt as a student, and the main character reminds me so much of one of my long-lost dear high school friends that reading the book was almost like a reunion.  And then my long-lost friend found me last week, while I was nose-deep in this book. 

Which is an interesting coincidence, because the plot of the book is all about the spooky power of books.  Niall, a young gay man who is a genius of languages, steps into college life like many young gay men do.  He starts to meet men he can date, relishes his freedom, and starts tip-toeing towards coming out.  He makes his way as a scholar in his own right, set free from the constraints of his family and his former school mates.  He befriends other students and tries to gauge how they’ll react to his homosexuality, and on some level realizes that his own happiness is so much more important than anyone else’s view of him.  It’s lovely.

And then it all goes to hell.  It has to–something needs to drive the novel.  Niall comes into contact with two mysterious older scholars who are involved in a strange form of divination, sortes.   He pesters all hell out of them until they let him into their mini-cult, and then loses himself to their rituals and their crackpot lifestyle.  He also loses touch with his family, lets a promising new relationship fall by the wayside, insults his friends, and founders in school.  So then we have to root for Niall to escape the cult.

The book isn’t perfect, of course.  It ends a bit abruptly.  It tortures the reader a bit too much in spots–we want Niall to regain his senses, to remember how much he loves his friends and his studies, and how intrigued he was by the Dublin gay scene and one particular man.  But despite the small weaknesses of the book, Mccrea did something all too rare–he called attention to some of the complexities of being openly gay, even in post-Catholic Ireland, and he created a gay character who isn’t just about stereotypes or erotica.  His Niall is about so much more than his sex life.  Because, well, isn’t everyone?  The book is a breath of fresh air, despite all of the claustrophobic chanting and studying the characters wallow in.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

I’m guessing many of you beat me to this book.  If not, here’s the skinny: Levitt, the unorthodox economist and Dubner, the journalist, examined several questions to break through our assumptions and find the real reasons behind many things in our world: cheating in sumo wrestling; the honesty (or lack thereof) of realtors; how required achievement testing and "No Child Left Behind" programs are encouraging teachers to cheat on their students’ behalves without actually doing anything to improve the state of education; names and how they affect success; real causes of crime drops; etc.  Some of the information is just interesting (did you know that Amy is the second whitest girl’s name, and Scott is the ninth whitest boy’s name? There goes all our street cred), and some of it should lead people to truly question how they vote, how they parent, and how they deal with their investments.

As I mentioned, the book lays out some pretty interesting information–none of which I want to spoil through feeble attempts at restating.  But more importantly, it encourages readers to question perceived knowledge about important subjects.  In short: don’t trust people to be entirely honest or to do decent research when dishonesty and shoddy scholarship will benefit them.  Just don’t.  It will hurt your wallet, it will hurt your kids’ educations, and it will hurt your world. 

The duo continues their work via the New York Times Magazine.  Check it out. 

I do not intend to be cruel.  But I can guarantee I had more fun than you did last night.  Unless you were where I was, that is, and only a few hundred people were.  Specifically on the correct side of the 9:30 club.  For the Old Crow Medicine Show show.  Hot damn.  Red hot skillet licking good. 

Now, I know not everyone has the love for old-time music and dance that I have.  That’s also how I know that, well, many many people are nutters.  Sure sure, not everyone grows up with the stuff.  Because failing to appreciate this makes no living sense to me, once you find out about it.  Firstly, bad musicianship just isn’t tolerated.  People who can’t play tunes don’t tour as old-time musicians.  Their instruments would be confiscated and donated to people who want to learn to play.  The minute pop-music-incorporated decides to give a damn about actual musical talent, I may look in its direction again.  Until then, I’m sticking to the worthwhile traditions and innovators.  Also, Old-time is the first truly American music, and it’s tied to blues and bluegrass and rock and rockabilly and folk.  And it’s tied to Africa and Ireland and Germany and Norway and Romania and many many other places.  And it’s still alive and kicking, as the Old Crow boys demonstrated last night. 

And thanks to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, T-Bone Burnett, Bruce Molsky, The Be Good Tanyas, Uncle Earl, the Old Crow boys, and too many other geniuses to mention, Old-time is getting real play these days.  This happens every fifteen years or so, and it’s a joy when it does.  It’s kind of strange this time around, having college-age kids with no previous experience of the stuff show up and lap it up.   Most of them will release it quickly and grab the next trend, but some of them will turn into true pickers and some will turn into true dancers, and that will keep this tradition alive for another fifteen years. 

Scott and I showed up early to grab a railing spot upstairs, and Mike and Tara came in soon after as did John and a few of his friends from work.  For whatever reason, we lucked into just the right spot.  The people on the stage right balcony looked like they were heavily sedated.  They weren’t dancing.  They were just kind of standing there, dumbstruck, for most of the show.  Stage left was a sea of dancing, singing fans.  I’ve never seen such a split in a crowd, but I was glad we went the right direction, because I really hate being scolded for dancing to a  . . .  wait for it . . . dance band. 

Now, I’ve been spreading the Old Crow gospel since Greetings from Wawa.  But we’d never had a chance to see them before, because they kept picking Baltimore over DC and playing on weeknights.  Stupid free will.  I was so happy to see how hard the guys were playing.  By our count, Ketch went through four bows.  Four bows.  The harmonies were tight, Ketch and Willie each hit a few steps here and there.  The one gospel song they played was played as a dirty blues, which may my evil little heart fly.  They played pretty much everything I wanted them to play, and they played it well, and the crowd ate it up.

It was a great ride, and I want to go again.

Ok, gotta stop.  I’m sure Tara got some good pictures, and I can’t wait to see them. 

One last thing–Wild Asparagus is playing the Glen Echo Contra on October 22nd.  It kind of makes me want to cry since I most likely can’t go, what with Rhinebeck and all.   So I beg you to go for me.  Big fat sigh.