It's Sunday I'm In Love

My ability to care about anything else has hit an all time low, I am way, way too caught up in this food truck life. I'm in the last few weeks of my last semester of culinary school and I don't care, self set blog posting deadlines keep coming and going and I haven't done a wonderful job of keeping them up, but this day job of mine has become way too much fun.

This job came along at just the right time for me. I've always been so obsessed with rules and schedules and meticulous details and this chaotic changeable work situation is so very much the opposite of all that. The very nature of taking this job on a food truck has put me in the position to take work when there is work to be done regardless of notice and it's done wonders for my uptight Capricorn sensibilities.

Just a little Saturday night square dancing

Working the truck has been a bit like having a wild, no good, motorcycle riding boyfriend, that you can never pin down to set up a date. He just shows up at all hours of the day or night, randomly, asking if you want to go out in an hour (or worse, right now), and your instinct is to say "no boo, plans are necessary" and yet you know that if you say yes and go that you will without fail have a marvelous, unforgettable time.

So you make a choice, do you say no, stay home, and get a full night's sleep? Or do you roll with it, buy yourself some leather boots, pull all-nighters, and learn the time saving benefits of drinking coffee in the bathtub? Some weeks I say to myself that this is too much, it can't possibly last, and that I will die young from lack of sleep, but every Sunday morning I find myself with stories to tell.

Bluegrass in the boonies

Even my hours spent baking, away from all the action are blissful. I put on a spotify playlist in the empty commissary, get elbows deep in biscuit dough and sing and bake all night, (or morning, or afternoon) until 300 or 400 or 600 biscuits are buttery golden brown and wrapped. Then roll on out to the next chaotic shift of bluegrass parties in the middle of the woods, brushes with country stars ( just keep it cool, don't let on that you know), and the inside of more port-o-johns than any sane person should see.

The problem of course now is finding a way to break free from the snake charming skills of the 'no good boyfriend' to deal with things like swiftly approaching finals, blog post deadlines, etc. I know that somehow, some way I will find a balance...

All the same, it's very lucky I get paid to do this. Food Truckin is one hell of a drug.

Sunday Kind Of Love - When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and

        measure them;

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much

        applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,

  In the mystical moist night -air,

and from time to time,

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Brown Sugar Maple Picard Cookies

modified slightly from this recipe in Bon Appetit December 2000

1 cup unsalted butter, room temp

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1/3 cup  real maple syrup, ( the good stuff)

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 cups AP flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

Royal icing for awkward, untrained decoration (optional)

In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Then whisk in the maple syrup, the egg, and the vanilla extract until combined. Whisk in the baking powder and the salt, then add the flour and mix until it comes together to form a dough. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes (and hour is better).

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and remove the dough from the refrigerator. Roll out the dough to about 1/3 inch thickness and cut out the cookies with the cutter. Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes depending on how crispy you like your cookies. Enjoy straight from the oven or cooled and decorated. 

Yeild 25 Picards

You can find the Facepalming Picard  cookie cutter here.

Sunday Kind Of Love - Happiness by Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out.

I'm near the window with coffee,

and the usual early morning stuff

that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend

walking up the road

to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,

and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.

They are so happy

they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take

each other's arm.

It's early in the morning,

and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.

The sky is taking on light,

though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute

death and ambition, even love,

doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on

unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,

any early morning talk about it.

* I would also like to add how happy it makes me that we live in a ridiculous, random world where for some reason, somewhere on the internet you can find Terence Stamp aka General Zod, reading this poem. I don't know if I've ever used this space to confess my ridiculous, undying love for all things superman, (if not, then I'm sure we'll talk about this soon), but the connection only makes this poem all the more perfect. If you can remember your Myspace password, you can listen to it here in all it's campy glory.

Buttermilk Thyme Biscuits/ Bacon + Egg Early Morning Sandwich

1200 grams AP Flour
24 grams Salt
60 grams Sugar
42 grams Baking powder
17 grams Baking soda
330 grams Unsalted Butter, cold and cut into cubes
75 grams Bacon grease, cooled
720 grams Full Fat Buttermilk
3 grams Fresh thyme, chopped
 Melted butter for brushing

In a large mixing bowl combine the first five ingredients and mix well so that the leavening is evenly distributed in the flour. Cut in the butter and the bacon grease with either a pastry cutter or your fingers ( I personally prefer using my hands), then add they thyme and the buttermilk and mix to combine, ( either a wooden spoon or your fingers will work here, once again I prefer to just get in there). Roll ( or press out) out the dough until it's about a 1 inch thickness all around and cut and re-roll biscuits as desired. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet, brush the tops with melted butter and baking in a 425 degree oven for 12-14 minutes until golden brown and fragrant. Makes about 24 towering biscuits (like mine), or 36 human sized biscuits.

To make a breakfast sandwich, peel the biscuit from the middle of those flaky layers, add bacon, a sunny side egg and enjoy!

Sunday Kind Of Love

Love Sonnet XII- Pablo Neruda

Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon

thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light

what obscure brilliance opens between your columns? 

What ancient night does a man touch with his senses?

Oh, loving is a journey with water and with stars,

with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour;

loving is a clash of lightning bolts

and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.

Kiss by kiss I move across your small infinity,

your borders, your rivers, your tiny villages,

and the genital fire transformed into delight

runs through the narrow pathways of the blood

until it plunges down, like a dark carnation,

until it is and is no more than a flash in the night.

Cherry Frangipane Tart

75 grams granulated white sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter softened

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

45 grams almond meal 

1 tablespoon all purpose flour

1 sheet puff pastry, room temperature, (store bought or make your own)

Approx 22 cherries ( enough to cover the tart, add more or less to taste), split and pitted

slivered almonds to taste, and powdered sugar


Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In a mixing bowl cream together the butter and sugar until the mixture is fluffy. Add the vanilla and the egg, and whisk to combine, then whisk in the almond meal and flour.

On a lightly floured surface, gently roll out the sheet of puff pastry so it's nice and even. Place puff pastry on a parchment lined baking sheet and then prick the pastry all over with a fork to vent steam and prevent irregular puffing.

Spoon the almond mixture onto the sheet of puff pastry, being sure to leave a 1/2 inch lip around the entire tart to form a crust. Top with cherry halves and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

Next, remove the tart from the oven and top with the sliced almonds, return the tart to the oven and bake 10 more minutes and until golden brown*.

Serve warm or cooled, topped with a light dusting of powdered sugar ( or ice cream!).


*= know your oven! If it runs hot and you think it will burn the sliced almonds hold off until the last 5-7 minutes of cooking, so that the nuts on top only become toasted not, you know, toast.

New Blog Feature - Sunday Kind Of Love

I've been thinking a lot about inspiration lately. Part of the trouble with keeping up a blog for any length of time is keeping up your inspiration, and in these days with so many people with so many clever ideas it's easy to feel intimidated and crippled and like anything I do would seem in someway  like a rip off of... everyone. So what I like to do every now and then is take a step back from the millions of voices an opinions on one subject, and turn my attention to different forms of art to recharge my creative mojo.

A few months back I read an article on the benefits of memorizing and reciting poetry, and it reminded me of how as a result of a kind of old fashioned parenting, I had been encouraged to memorize poems as a child.
And even though it sounds like a tedious chore in a way, there was just something about memorizing  and reciting poems that just felt good, like the chanting and the repetition not only caused the actual emotion of the poem to take root in my heart, but like a paint brush had changed the colors of my mind from shades of grey to wild lime greens, pastels, and disco silvers that made me feel alive.

Inspiration comes when the brain lets go of the task at hand and focuses on something else entirely, and one of the best ways to release your brain is to focus on something emotional. For me memorizing and reciting poetry is a magnificent way to escape from the logical, analytical, rational mind space to the emotional, free-thinking creative mind.

I've decided to harness the creative energy this pastime provides, and I've created a new blog feature to appear every other Sunday, called Sunday Kind Of Love where I'll combine the poem that I'm memorizing with a dish or recipe it inspired. It won't always be an incredibly literal interpretation, I anticipate that most of the time it might seem a little abstract, but my aim is to convey to the emotion of the poem with a dish that I feel represents the same.

I'm starting this project out with my all time favorite poem, Pablo Neruda's Love Sonnet XII,  a poem that I've loved for years ( it's the reason the blog is named The Full Woman), though I've never taken the time before to memorize it.

I'm really excited to share this project with you and sort of mix things up on the blog a little.

See you Sunday.

-m