OF A GOLDEN AGE

Beloit College Magazine recently reprinted edited versions of two features I wrote last year. The articles were coverage of a speaker series, wherein school figures discussed their values and where they originated. It was one of the most compelling campus events in my four years there, and I sat through endless speakers for the newspaper.

Here and here.

My office runs a list of upcoming Fridays and someone signs up to bring treats for each one. In honor of my final Friday (my new job starts Tuesday) I baked cupcakes, starting with an unadorned Pillsbury white cake mix and chocolate cake mix.*

Here are some things I added or tried. All of these would work well independently in either white or chocolate cake mix. Combine them recklessly and with courage. Come on, you can do it.

• A cup of plain cooked oatmeal
• A cup of oatmeal cooked in sweetened black coffee
• Blend in two almost-brown bananas cut into pieces
• Dried cranberries
• One large carrot greated very fine
• Natural peanut butter
• Peanut butter or chocolate chips
• Finely chopped walnuts

As an example, in one batch of white cake I blended in cranberries, oatmeal, banana, carrots, walnuts, and chocolate chips. These came out amazing and I finished them with cream cheese frosting from a can. A veritable succes fou, the best part being, of course, how the mixing process took three minutes total.

* As my favorite pop band, Tullycraft, once asked jokingly: “Does the world really need another orange cake mix song? I don’t think so.” I’ve never seen an orange cake mix, unfortunately. But here are some dancing cupcakes.

This is a time-intensive process but it’s really satisfying. Because I have very few kitchen implements, let alone fancy unitaskers,* this requires nothing more special than a rolling pin. The structure for making ravioli is always the same so you could substitute anything you want as filling. It should be fairly firm and not liquidy. My filling concoction comes after the ravioli directions.

Start with a basic pasta dough. Here’s a Mario Batali version with only the necessary ingredients. The recipes are somewhat elastic, as mine was gummy at first which I corrected with a little flour, then it dried out overnight and I reinvigorated it with a little water and egg white. You just have to knead the shit out of it again whenever you add anything. Beat it with your fists, roll it around, beat it some more. It’s fun.

Cut a section off the hunk of dough about half or 3/4ths the size of your palm. Flour your rolling surface and rolling pin and get to it — the dough is bouncy and it takes some elbow grease to get it rolled out. Roll it as thin as you possibly can, and try to keep it in a more square or round shape, as opposed to a long skinny sort of thing. Use a glass to cut rounds from the dough, however large you want for the ravioli you’re making, or use a knife to cut squares. Hit each piece with the rolling pin one more time to make sure it’s as thin as possible.

Break an egg into a small bowl to use as an adhesive. Brush it (I used my finger) around the edges of the pasta, then put an appropriate amount of filling in the middle. Place a matching pasta shape on top and press the edges with a fork. Try to make the edges as narrow as possible — I shoot for about a quarter inch.

Drop them into boiling water and wait until they float. This will take VERY LITTLE TIME. Drain well, plate, and hit with olive oil, salt, and pepper. If you do a more basic filling you’ll probably want a sauce instead of just olive oil, but I didn’t want to drown the delicate shrimp and spinach flavor in tomato or anything.

As far as the filling goes, here’s what I did: I took a pound of cooked shrimp, a package of frozen chopped spinach, and about a half cup of ricotta cheese and food processed it, tossing in salt and a smidge of cayenne to taste. The important part is to drain the spinach really, really well after it’s thawed. I actually picked it up by handsful and squeezed the water out of it.

* All due adoration to Alton Brown: Read the bottom item.

The Whole Foods store in the Sauganash neighborhood of Chicago has a stupid-small parking lot full of too-narrow spots. If everyone drove a Chevy Corsica, we would have a lot more spending cash as a society and this parking lot wouldn’t be a complete nightmare. Usually I end up climbing out of my car like a spider monkey because some giant Lexus SUV parked on the white line.

This week I walked out of the store and saw an unfamiliar car idiotically parked in the fire lane. I double-taked and realized it was a Rolls-Royce, which makes a tie for best car I’ve ever seen in person — this and a Lotus Esprit on North Avenue over the summer. A guy who works in the building next to mine drives a Maserati but it’s a low-end model. Maserati, like many modern high-end car makers, has spread itself across a lot of markets. Similar: that Jaguar-Ford starter car they’ve finally, thankfully, stopped selling in the U.S. It’s kind of a fancy Taurus. You see why this is terrible.

Returning to the Rolls though, we must ask ourselves: If you drove a Rolls-Royce, why would you take it to the market? When I called my dad to tell him about this, he pointed out that when you’re that rich, it probably doesn’t matter to you all that much. People don’t save up to buy a Rolls; they buy them once they’re rich enough that it’s literally the most expensive car they can buy, and even then they likely could spare a lot more.

These people live in another world, but as they say, sometimes worlds collide.

* I don’t have a Maserati and neither do you: Joe Walsh did. Learn some pop culture.

The majestic and indomitable Julie Andrews appeared on Fresh Air last week to talk about her new memoir. I only heard part of the interview (you can hear it here) driving around on my lunchbreak, and once again I marveled at how recognizable Andrews’ voice is, even in speaking instead of singing.

Her speech is impeccable, and it was funny to hear her describe the process by which she learned a Cockney accent to sing Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady on Broadway. Apparently she had the words to certain songs written out phonetically as to get the full Cockney effect, though you can still hear her erudite English sneaking through the ‘Enry ‘Igginses in the original Broadway cast recording. In this regard, Audrey Hepburn and Marni Nixon (dubbed as Hepburn’s singing voice) did a better job.

In these modern times, people no longer so adamantly work toward Received Pronunciation (the official title for Henry Higgins’ ideal English accent) — even the BBC no longer holds RP as its standard.

A. T. Nee told me earlier that he found some old things from elementary school, intelligence tests and the like. This inspired me to dig through my own early childhood.

Before my disastrous head-on collision with Catholic school, before the freedom of speech of public school gave me chronic logorrhea, I spent a couple of years with Miss Chris in daycare. Our favorite song was “Pink Cadillac,” which we were known to sing frequently. On my final report card from preschool she used a rubric of skills children my age were encouraged to have: counting, identifying shapes, reading, and so forth.

My favorite category is “Identifies the Colors: red, blue, green, yellow, brown, purple, white, black, orange.” These are all circled, and next to it Miss Chris added and circled “Pink.”

British Crown dependency Sark is on the Wikipedia homepage today for its abolition of Europe’s last remaining feudal system. Take a look at the first item in its Recent History.

We passed the 106th anniversary of John Steinbeck’s birth this February 27. In 1960, Steinbeck had an eventually-fatal heart condition and, inspired by the “virus of restlessness,” took a roadtrip around the continental U.S. His resulting travelogue is Travels with Charley, published in 1962, the same year Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This is a delightful little book, fast-reading and observational. Steinbeck’s only companion is his French poodle Charles le Chien (“Charles the dog”), who competes with Steinbeck for best character in the book. As Steinbeck realizes, having an “exotic” dog like Charley is a shortcut to benevolent conversation with strangers, as he creates the perfect opening to say hello: “What manner of dog is that?”

At one point Steinbeck discusses the Russians with a Minnesota shopkeeper who, Steinbeck says, “remembered humor when it was not against the law.” After a pleasant-yet-provocative bit of dialogue, the shopkeeper says to Steinbeck, “You’ve give me something to think about in a sneaking kind of way.”

“I thought you gave it to me,” Steinbeck says back.

When I finished reading my copy, a 1968 Bantam paperback, the back cover fell off.

Steinbeck died very late in 1968, which means:

1. He lived eight years after learning that he had a fatal heart condition, which is, as they say, nothing to shake a stick at; and
2. His predictions as to the escalating racial strife in America came to life before his eyes after all. He even lived through the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In 2002, the same year Steinbeck would have turned 100, the Writer ran a feature on author homes and haunts* with several spots in the Monterey, California area, “which has become something of a literary Disneyland.” I can’t help but wonder how this might embarrass Steinbeck, who, in Travels with Charley, is nearly fisticuffed out of Monterey by old friends who resent his leaving for New York.

* including a Hemingway home I’d never heard of, in Idaho; aren’t his homes in Oak Park and Key West more widely known? Maybe Idaho is grasping at touristical straws.

My favorite way to cook is to start with something really easy and amp it up with a little bit of thought. Experimenting with basics is a great way to learn how food works.

Start with a basic banana muffin mix. I used Krusteaz (honestly, who named this brand?) but I’d imagine they’re all similar. Prepare the batter as indicated.

Stir in the following:

• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli semi-sweets)
• 2 carrots, peeled and finely grated
• 1 banana, cut into fourths lengthwise then chopped

Bake at the prescribed temperature. Be prepared for a few extra minutes of baking time because of the moisture in the banana and carrots.

Tony linked me to this New York Times story about willpower as a limited resource with many potential outlets.

“Most cognitive functions are unaffected by minor blood sugar fluctuations over the course of a day, but planning and self-control are sensitive to such small changes. Exerting self-control lowers blood sugar, which reduces the capacity for further self-control. People who drink a glass of lemonade between completing one task requiring self-control and beginning a second one perform equally well on both tasks, while people who drink sugarless diet lemonade make more errors on the second task than on the first.”

I think about this often — at work I sometimes don’t eat breakfast (I know, bad) but in those cases have a cup of juice or some soymilk or something to get my blood sugar going, which I previously thought was probably (mostly) psychological. Sugar-free foods, especially the ones that are high in fat, always make me feel sluggish and unsatisfied. That’s not to say I don’t knock back a number of diet sodas in your average week.

The low-calorie food that fascinates me most is Quaker’s new Mini Delights, which come individually packaged in 90-calorie quantities. Each serving, at least of most of the flavors, has 15% of your daily allotment of saturated fat. Yikes. This might be the epitome of calorie blinders — as long as a food fits into the daily quota, its particulars go unnoticed.

Then again, if this self-denial willpower idea holds, then those three grams of saturated fat may prevent a whole world of hurt in the bottom of an Entemann’s box later.