I always pace when I'm waiting for baked goods.
neb it is truly astonishing how much you sound like David Rakoff in that mp3.
Fantastic by Bave. I've hated NPR for years, they are SWPL overload. And aging complacent boomer SWPL, the worst kind. I reached my breaking point during the Iraq war. I particularly came to hate the endless pieces about the Civil Rights Movement. Attaway to feel self-righteous about about some shit that happened forty years ago, not like there are any controversial injustices today!
Yeah, fuck NPR. i just hate any info medium where you can't skip the dull bits.
Plus, you could be playing music.
neb it is truly astonishing how much you sound like David Rakoff in that mp3.
This is exactly right.
I swear I've never even heard Rakoff before.
Bave sounds so sensibly Midwestern. I'm surprised you trolled him like that, Ben, what with your rhubarb pie and your NPRish turn.
m, i hope that doesn't turn around you on the asp
I don't seem know the common saying (I'm assuming it's a commons saying?) on which the punchline to neb's salty-dog joke is based.
16: The key words are "reach" and "grasp."
17: Oh! I didn't know that expression, but that makes sense, thanks.
Wait, seriously, the Rakoff thing? I unmask myself as the linker to Bave's who listened to Neb's file and immediately said, "You sound like David Rakoff."
For a year or so, I oft quoted the line at 4:15 in the clip in 14. God that is still so funny to me.
Thanks for the link.
Neb's voice isn't quite as dryly fey as Rakoff's.
I confess I once channeled Ira Glass as "host" of a TAL-style panel at a conference. I have a cassette recording of it that I have never listened to.
The cooking show was annoying, but the guy circulating egregious lies about Iraqi death tolls was perhaps marginally moreso.
The pie is delicious. I had to wait because a viewing of The Killing intervened.
Ok, I made comment 25 after having only had bits of the crust. Now that I've had the pie proper I can say that the pie fucking fantastic.
This is genius, and suggests to me that you are making a grave error, although it's not as though I have someone in my back pocket who is willing to pay you to do things like this.
Yeah, fuck NPR. i just hate any info medium where you can't skip the dull bits.
Well, given that all my NPR listening, unless I'm on holiday, is via podcasts, I can skip the dull bits.
Also, since I can't listen to this thing at work, what sort of NPR is Bave talking about? TAL? Science Friday? All Things Considered? Or all of it?
28.1: Do you download the podcast with the pledge drive?
28.last: I find one of those things not like the others.
In general I think Weekend Edition is much better than Morning Edition/whatever the general daily evening news is called.
You have a perfect voice for radio or podcasts, Bave. To really hit NPR house style you need to talk a little slower and with a less engagement with the material, but don't because your fake NPR voice is very pleasant, better than the real thing.
The substance of the bit I have lots of arguments with, but I'll leave that aside and just encourage you to do more podcasts.
I won't get a chance to listen to the podcast until I'm no longer at work, but neb's piece has me sappily remembering all the time I spent listening to My Word on our local NPR affiliate when I was a child. I loved the shaggy dog pseudoetymology stories even when I didn't quite get the jokes.
Rhubarb pies can smell good, but they're never delicious; at best they're palatable. They're are many foodstuffs that our more desperate ancestors ate that are unjustly neglected, then there are things like lung and rhubarb.
Hrmphf. It's not pie, but Buck made a delicious rhubarb fool this weekend. (Allowing us to repeatedly ask each other "Say, what is this stuff?" "Rhubarb, fool!")
If you've got the candied ginger around, it's quick and easy..
I made a delicious light fool from lights, fool.
I am not a fan of rhubarb pie either, but I feel it foolish not to take neb at his word. I assume have not had the right rhubarb pie. (But, I'm still not going to go on a quest for the perfect rhubarb recipe.)
The Rhubarb Shortcake with Rosé-Poached Rhubarb, Strawberry-Rhubarb Sorbet and Vanilla Yogurt Sabayon at this restaurant is in fact delicious and in no way comparable to lung.
Huh, that's right out by Mom's summer place. Worth going to?
The Rhubarb Shortcake with Rosé-Poached Rhubarb, Strawberry-Rhubarb Sorbet and Vanilla Yogurt Sabayon at this restaurant is in fact delicious and in no way comparable to lung.
But it would be comparable to a Lung Shortcake with Rosé-Poached Lung, Strawberry-Lung Sorbet and Vanilla Yogurt Sabayon.
Strawberry-Lung
An occupational disease of fruit-miners.
37 looks a bit like lung in a glass, if the cow was a smoker.
Hrm. It'll make a nice place to take her out to after we fling the kids at her for the customary summer week.
I have never tasted rhubarb.
We had rhubarb growing in our garden when I was growing up, which rhubarb no one had planted and no one did anything with. Well, no one did anything with it, except all of us neighborhood kids routinely challenged each other to try to eat it, never having been told the leaves are toxic.
This story is in a chapter of a possible forthcoming book called It's Probably a Miracle I've Survived As Long As I Have.
WTFF. Rhubarb is f'cking delicious. I'd take rhubarb in a pie/crumble over any soft-fruit, and especially over the minging wall-paper paste mixed with sewage effluent that is pumpkin.
We used to pick the rhubarb and dip it in granulated sugar.
Man, that was an attack on pumpkin pie out of left field. What'd pumpkin pie ever do to you?
I can take or leave rhubarb -- mostly, it's fruity/sour. Which is nice in a dessert with enough sugar, but it's not strawberries, or cherries. Or blueberries. Or, come to think, peaches.
And lung is nice when prepared as God intended, i.e. boiled in a sheep's stomach with oats, suet, spices and other offaly bits.
53: The hardest part is convincing the sheep to swallow hard enough to get its lung into its stomach.
re: 51
I'd take rhubarb over all those fruits in a pie. Easily. Rhubarb, or the bramley apple are the natural fillings for pies.
Pumpkin gives me the boak, which is why I always attack it given the chance!
There is a place outside Pittsburgh that makes a raspberry pie that is my favorite pie. Basically, they blind-bake a crust, fill it with several pounds of fresh raspberries, and dump some kind of jelly-ish stuff on to hold the fruit together.
56.1: That is so, so wrong. Peach pie, I'll admit, is iffy -- you need to hit the peaches at the precise moment, or it's insipid. But sour cherry, or blueberry, or strawberry pie is way better than rhubarb. Rhubarb is worth paying attention to only because it's ready to eat earlier than anything else you could make pie out of, other than last year's apples.
57: That's the best kind of blueberry pie too -- mostly fresh raw blueberries, with about 1/4 the total weight of blueberries cooked into a thick sauce with lemon and cornstarch and poured hot over the rest, to cook them a little bit and bind them together. Mmmm.
59: The problem, of course, is that it is only available for about 2 weeks a year.
Nope. I really don't like the texture of soft fruit when cooked, and they are all too sweet. I recognize that a lot of people really like both the texture and the sweetness, but that's just not what I want in pies or crumbles.
Then again, I'd usually rather eat a raw carrot than a strawberry, so perhaps I'm not the most committed fruit eater.
Same with sour cherries. I always lie in wait for the sour cherry season, and then the two weeks they're available is either a heat wave where I couldn't possibly bake, or I'm too busy at work to make pie. But this year definitely.
61: Well, I suppose that leaves more strawberries for everyone else, and more lung for you. Everyone's happy.
61: But, as LB noted in 59, the berries are not really cooked. That said, the pie I'm thinking of is very sweet.
I find the hardest part about Moon Pie is getting the moon just right.
Goddamn you people. Off to the vending machine...
You have Moon Pie in your vending machine?
A snickers bar was the closest substitute I could find. What I really wanted was the raspberry pie described in 57.
re: 63
Yeah, it's not even as if I don't have a sweet tooth. I like chocolate, and pastries, and soft drinks like Coke. But with fruit, I'm not that keen and if I'm having them, I prefer apples or grapefruit or rhubarb to all the traditional sweet fruit like strawberries.
I can't imagine eating a strawberry pie. The only way to render strawberries palatable in a pie (ie prevent it from becoming too sweet) is to mix in a healthy quantity of rhubarb. And then you may as well just make rhubarb pie and do something more fitting with the strawberries, like eat them raw.
Sour cherries make a good pie too, but the season is very short out here.
For those keeping track, THINGS WHICH MING, according to ttaM:
1. Brown rice
2. Pumpkin
3. Butternut squash
Raw carrots can be very nice indeed and even—sweet.
70: The key, again, is keeping most of them raw. A strawberry tart with fresh strawberries set into a layer of cooked strawberries is the traditional father's day dessert around Chez Breath. I can't think of when I've had an all-cooked strawberry pie -- that'd probably be oversweet, certainly.
Fresh carrot juice—especially fresh carrot juice with a bit of fresh ginger, uh, juice and fresh beet juice—is the One True Juice™.
I'd rather just have the strawberries. Mostly I buy a thing of strawberries at the farmer's market and gob them all on the bus on the way home (whereas the peaches I eat while still at the market). Or make this. Why mess with other flavors/substances? The only reason I made a rhubarb pie instead of a rhubarb compote was that I thought slices would make it easier to keep track of how fast I ate it.
The one true juice is grapefruit juice.
You can't eat on the bus unless you've brought enough for everybody.
I second both 73 and 75. Although I also like fresh tomato juice.
I WILL KILL ALL THE JUICE!
I call foul on 78. 73 and 75 both assert the existence of one true juice. 78 is polyjuicist.
79: Are you calling them Nazis? That doesn't seem fair.
The One True Juice is baby blood.
The One True water is American beer.
"Now that I've had the pie proper I can say that the pie fucking fantastic."
Everyone has been assuming that the missing "is" belongs between pie and fucking. I was assuming it belonged before fantastic, which seems like a more proper use for a rhubarb pie.
70: The only way to render strawberries palatable in a pie (ie prevent it from becoming too sweet) is to mix in a healthy quantity of rhubarb.
This is right.
And then you may as well just make rhubarb pie and do something more fitting with the strawberries
This is wrong.
The one true juice is grapefruit juice.
With gin.
87: That's an awfully piney greyhound you've got there.
57 - that sounds like a tart, not a pie. You lot go on about pie all the time, and no one I know in real life ever does. Do you mean actual pies, or have you been talking about tarts all this time?
No, what you we call a pie you call a "Tipsy Parson".
89: Favorite story an old gf used to tell: she was walking along the street with a (very very flaming gay) friend of hers, and a dishy, fashionable-looking woman was walking in front of them. Her friend took an apple out of his backpack, bit into it and exclaimed: "Wow! Tart!"
The woman in front of them stopped, turned around contemptuously and said: "Faggot!"
To my mind, the distinction between a pie and a tart is not whether the filling is cooked, but whether the sides are sloped. I have most assuredly been talking about pies all this time.
89: don't include me in that "you lot". Those weirdos.
Chicken pot pies are laudable, obviously.
93.2: They don't have actual pot in them, Tweety.
94: I've been using the wrong recipe all this time?
Rhubarb dipped in sugar is awesome, though.
In strawberry season, I like to make a frangipane tart that has uncooked halved strawberries on top. Strawberries and frangipane play very well together, and, like neb, I think it's cruel to cook a strawberry. (Fresh strawberry-ginger mojitos are good, too.)
re: 70
Yes, except I changed my mind on brown rice in the past year or so.
strawberries are best with a little bit of cream and sugar. A very fresh creme fraiche is ideal.
Further organ analogies, if lungs are the rhubarb of offal, brains are the tofu. If you pressed some firm tofu to make it drier, dredged slices in flour with salt and pepper, fried it up in butter and served it with lemon, would you even be able to tell the difference?
89: No. It's a pie. It is about five inches deep in the center and that there is no custard-stuff. It is probably, as LB discussed, some other cooked-down fruit.
You lot go on about pie all the time, and no one I know in real life ever does. Do you mean actual pies, or have you been talking about tarts all this time?
Not all pies have meat in them here.
You lot go on about pie all the time, and no one I know in real life ever does.
Well, you know mostly Brits in real life, don't you? My understanding was that fruit pies are much more prominent in America.
104: Meat Tarts were my favorite Halloween candy.
107 me, and refers, of course, to the use of the past tense.
I thought I mentioned this last time pies came up, but in Chile they call some pies kuchen, but they call other pies "pies" (pronounced like the English), and I was never able to glean the difference. Maybe it was that "pies" have a lid on top?
Kuchen desserts are presumably handed down from people of German heritage and as such are often popular in many areas of German settlement in the United States, particularly North Dakota, South Dakota, Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
That seems like an odd use of "presumably."
109: In Chile, it is also true (according to una amiga from high school) that some cakes are tortas and some are queques.
Chileans build their traditional dwellings out of pastries?
"Buenos dias, Presidente Palma. May I welcome you to my humble pastry hut?"
115: "Thank you, Señor Vargas, but do tell me. Why is this room filled with custard?"
114: You wouldn't believe the ant problems those poor people have.
117: And the ants! With all their itty-bitty ant mouths just full of leetle ant cavities.
You wouldn't believe the problems their cavities have.
109: "Kuchen" sounds like it'd be a German word for "cake." Presumably it would cover the same things that Germans call cakes, yes?
My name is Anastomosis, Network of Networks,
Look upon my Networks ye Mighty, and despair!
In my experience, very few people actually like pumpkin pie. They just feel obliged to have a slice ("oh, just a sliver, really!") at Thanksgiving out of a sense of tradition.
Pumpkin pie should not be wasted on people who don't like it.
As long as there's whipped cream, I'm all for pumpkin pie. I will say that I learned the hard way that nutmeg is not the kind of thing where you can get away with eyeballing how much to use if you have as bad of an eye as I do.
In my view, there's a lot of obligatory pie-eating.
Was it OFE who mentioned not long ago having a sweet-tooth 30 degrees to the negative of the apparent majority? He put it more elegantly. (Google does not turn up the relevant comment.)
I didn't have pumpkin pie until quite late in life, and am not fond of it. I like savory squash though.
129: As long as it's not some nasty-ass Jack Daniels whipped cream. What a senseless waste of whiskey!
I like savory squash though.
The kids today and their slang.
I don't like pumpkin pie at all. Sweet potato pie fills all my orange pie needs.
130: I have only recently acquired any taste for sweets. I've found myself buying those chocolate marzipan Ritter Sport bars once a month. I haven't bought a candy bar since I was little and liked those peanut rolls with caramel.
132: I'm happy to take your word on that. Where do you find it? TGIFridays or something?
130: I think that was this week on the threat with the ironing board.
137 was me. And it was more of a "thread" than a "threat."
I thought "the threat with the ironing board" was a less evocative idea than "the thing with the cup", but then again, I don't know what's good writing and what's bad.
135: No doubt there's a lot of habituated taste involved. I haven't bought a candy bar since I was little either, and there's still some (high-quality looking) Christmas gift chocolate stuff in the pantry. On the other hand, I'll go for gummy bears, not like a crazy person, but with undisguised enjoyment. With pies and cakes and cookies I'm often reluctant.
I've never really figured out why some sweets are great (fruit crumble or crisp, go easy on the sugar) and others are just ... not. Tartness is good. Texture is a major factor.
I love pumpkin pie. I'm not very fond of other traditional Thanksgiving food, and generally just eat a little for tradition's sake, but I'll eat as much pumpkin pie as I can.
137: I don't remember anything about any ironing board. I thought it was about wine.
I like and make pastries, but I don't make them for myself. I'll spend 12 hours making the perfect dinner for myself, but dessert must be shared.
I am considering the possibility of a roommate this fall. She also cooks, and has a serious sweet tooth, and I think I'd enjoy making cakes and pies for her.
I'd like to say that I have no idea why I'm being so earnest about the negative sweet-tooth thing, but I do, I do! I'm defensive! I don't really like pie, okay?! Or cake! I am sorry! Cut it out with the damn pie all the time! Really not much for the pastries!
The next troll who surfaces can bring pesto.
I enjoy pie and cake in company, but it's not a thing I need. My possibly-future roommate is eastern European and I've been on many long walks with her in the middle of the night to find a bite of something sweet. Once, in Dallas, she resorted to Pepperidge Farm cookies. It would never occur to me to purchase cookies.
It would never occur to me to purchase cookies.
Not even Oreos?
148: I have never bought cookies in my life.
It would never occur to me to purchase cookies.
Right.
The images I see for the link in 128 do not approximate American pie at all, though a few are of tarts.
I have developed a bad habit of heading downstairs to the little cafe every afternoon at 3:00 and buying a candy bar. I really ought to stop doing that.
The largish bags of trail mix I've been buying to stash at work for the week's snacking purposes have also only been lasting for two days. I think I have a snacking problem.
Despite having a normal sweet tooth, I adore Japanese red-bean-paste-basted confections. When I first had them it was a revelation to me that something could be only mildly sweet.
I believe Kuchen is the ancestor of American English "cookie" (hence the divergence from home island usage).
Cooking pastries while not particularly having a taste for them has to be strange: how do you do a taste test? Of course not having a taste for them doesn't necessarily entail not being able to determine if you've made them well or ill.
A vegetarian friend of mine decided to go to culinary school, and I ran into her a few years later as chef in a local restaurant: she said she'd learned how to tell when certain meats were done properly by testing their tenderness by analogy to the softness of certain spots on her hand. Beef should be done to the tenderness of the spot of flesh between your thumb and index finger, for example. (Poke this spot and observe its fleshiness yet resilience.) Interesting. Weird way to cook.
Beef should be done to the tenderness of the spot of flesh between your thumb and index finger, for example.
The tenderness of this spot varies depending on how tightly you make a fist, which gives a rough approximation of the continuum between rare and well-done. It is not a singular thing.
155: It is not only vegetarians who use this method to determine doneness of meat. In fact, I believe it's more or less the standard way to tell when meat is properly done, assuming you are unwilling or unable to use an instant-read thermometer.
155: For chicken, I have various microbial concerns, so I have a special technique to check doneness that uses digits. I use my thumb, index finger, and middle finger to hold a meat thermometer and jab it into the chicken.
157, 158: Ah, yeah, that makes complete sense. It was the first time I'd heard of it, from her, and it seemed to me that she was cooking blind, as it were. But it makes sense.
Weird way to cook
No, it isn't. It's an intelligent way to cook, since it lets you accurately tell (when you've gotten good, anyway) how cooked your piece of meat is without having to introduce any holes into it.
Cleopatra is very well done, neb.
So you can stop poking her now.
You pay a very fine compliment, k-sky.
You're a gracious compliment-taker, ben.
We are three very fine gentlemen, to be sure.