Glass, Glas, Vidrio, Vitrum, Verre, ὕαλος, 玻璃

I adore glass, both its liquid qualities and its brittle ones. Glass looks like it can flow, like magma, slow and glowing and molasses-like, but it can also be crafted so thinly that it looks as light as air, almost invisible in its clearest forms. I remember as a child loving the glass icicle Christmas ornaments more than any of the others, and I want someday to decorate a tree only in clear lights and glass icicles. Imagine how such a tree would sound when touched!

When in a museum, I'm always drawn to displays of ancient glass. The opalescent sheen and the weathered textures of ancient glass enchant me, along with the thought that such a fragile item has survived hundreds of years.

Roman pitcher, 2nd-4th Century CE, Honolulu Academy of Art

Some of this love of glass is also tied to my love of food, oddly enough. I am fascinated by liquid glass - why? Why, because it looks edible! While it's being shaped, glass is glowingly molten and pliable - like taffy or caramel for the gods. My love of glass and my love of sweets feed into each other: I love glass, in part, because it looks scrumptious, and I love foods that look and behave like glass. I can't get enough of oozing caramel, brittle toffee, or burnt sugar.


But did you know that scientists are still puzzled by the molecular structure of glass? A New York Times article recently explored the competing theories of why glass is hard. Yep, you read that right. It seems that glass has the same kind of molecular structure as that of liquids, which is random and jumbled. It is not like other materials, such as water or silica, whose molecules form neat, crystalline patterns when solidified. Glass in its solid form inexplicably looks like a liquid. From the article:

Philip W. Anderson, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at Princeton, wrote in 1995: “The deepest and most interesting unsolved problem in solid state theory is probably the theory of the nature of glass and the glass transition.”

So, there you go. Glass is not only beautiful, it's a mystery, even though we've worked with it for thousands of years.

Glass octopus bowl, a recent gift I received.

Of Pan Au Lait & Pizza

Two things seem bound for a head-on collision in my life: my love of baking and my desire to eat healthfully (i.e. with fewer carbs). It doesn't help that Pan au Lait, from which sugary danishes and rolls can be crafted, is wickedly easy to make.

The cheese danishes are especially heavenly right out of the oven. Is it wrong to eat two breakfast pastries every day? What if I made them? That expends some calories, right?

I've also taken to making pizza dough - also very easy and, better yet, freezable so that I can thaw a ball of dough for dinner whenever and throw whatever I want on it. Sometimes this can lead to a bit of madness, like when I decided to use everything in the fridge on one the other night.

So, here we have onions, green peppers, yellow summer squash, garlic, tomatoes, chicken, and two kinds of cheese: Irish white cheddar and something I like to call Sicilian ass cheese, much to the chagrin of my dining companion. At least I'm getting my 5 servings a day of vegetables in one slice!

A Serious Case of the Pretties

Today I bought Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette - not because I think it's great film (although it is fun to watch) but because it is so so tooth-achingly pretty!


And although Kirsten Dunst gets to wear the most amazing gowns, what I love even more than all the feathers and lace and silk shoes are the beautiful French pastries. Especially the multi-colored macarons. I don't even love the taste of macarons, and yet I have hunted them down all over the net and calculated making them over and over again because...well, because they're pretty!!!

I also stumbled upon the website TheFrock.com, where the most amazing Victorian and Edwardian and Flapper frocks can be found. Why don't we dress this fabulously anymore?

Can't you just imagine stepping out of a carriage, with this little ensemble? You're on your way to the opera, one hand on the arm of your beloved, the other grasping your diamond- encrusted lorgnette. Your name might as well be Baroness Orczy.

The thing is, you can PURCHASE these frocks! I mean, they might cost you a pretty penny - around $2-5K - but it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Okay, maybe they are. But a girl can dream, right? Never mind the fact that I will have no occasion to wear these things. That never stopped a true lover of the Pretty.

But, in the order of actual prettiness one can buy, my first full bottle of perfume arrived today. I wish I could say it were a Serge Lutens exclusive fragrance, in a bell jar, or - better yet - a bottle of Amouage Gold. Those darned bottles are made out of 24% lead crystal and gold! Sigh...

No, no. It was something much more down to earth: Sarah Jessica Parker's Covet. I heard it was being discontinued and, since I seem to be one of the only people who find it a wearable scent, I quickly snatched up a bottle of it from eBay. On me I smell citrus and lavender, followed by chocolate and musk. The musk lingers for a nice long time, and it is one of the first perfumes that I experienced that mmmmmm with when I smelled it on my jacket a few days later. So, yes, today I have had quite an attack of the pretties. Can't anyone else relate?

Figues Fraîches

I was at a small gourmet market this morning and saw these smiling up at me:


I had to take them home. Then, of course, comes the delightful dilemma of figuring out what to do with them. In the end, I didn't feel like fooling around with panna cotta or tart dough, so I took the path of least resistance:

They're nestled in some Greek yogurt, drizzled with honey, then sprinkled with walnuts. I think figs are highly under appreciated here in the States. In my parents' orchard we have several fig trees, but it's been so long since I've had fresh figs. I didn't realize I've been missing their tender, mellow, date-like sweetness.

I now also have a hankering for fig fragrances, though I have yet to sniff one. I have a feeling I'll like that figgy note. Two prominent fig fragrances are L'Artisan Parfumuer's Premier Figuier and Diptyque's Philosykos. I find it interesting that both fragrances are supposedly rather "green" smelling, since the notes involve not only the fruit but also the leaves and sap of a fig tree. If anyone has ever picked figs, they'll know that a milky sap oozes out from the stems.

But...I'd rather just have the fruit, please. I find I'm attracted to perfumes that are slightly edible - not too foody or sweet but evocative enough to hit that space in the brain that hums "mmmm" happily to itself. Then a fragrance is sensual enough to involve more than just one sense.

There is no fig flower fragrance to conjure up in perfumery, however. In Chinese, fig is "wu hua guo," literally "fruit without flowers" - the fig has its flowers on the inside of its fruit - what's known as an "enclosed inflorescence." Here's a meditation on this hidden fertility, as well as on sweet fig flesh, by D. H. Lawrence. Who better to wax poetic on such themes?

Figs

by D. H. Lawrence

The proper way to eat a fig, in society,

Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,

And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.

Then you throw away the skin

Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,

After you have taken off the blossom, with your lips.

But the vulgar way

Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.

Every fruit has its secret.

The fig is a very secretive fruit.

As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic:

And it seems male.

But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female.

The Italians vulgarly say, it stands for the female part ; the fig-fruit:

The fissure, the yoni,

The wonderful moist conductivity towards the centre.

Involved,

Inturned,

The flowering all inward and womb-fibrilled;

And but one orifice.

The fig, the horse-shoe, the squash-blossom.

Symbols.

There was a flower that flowered inward, womb-ward;

Now there is a fruit like a ripe womb.

It was always a secret.

That’s how it should be, the female should always be secret.

There never was any standing aloft and unfolded on a bough

Like other flowers, in a revelation of petals;

Silver-pink peach, venetian green glass of medlars and sorb-apples,

Shallow wine-cups on short, bulging stems

Openly pledging heaven:

Here’s to the thorn in flower ! Here is to Utterance !

The brave, adventurous rosaceæ.

Folded upon itself, and secret unutterable,

And milky-sapped, sap that curdles milk and makes ricotta,

Sap that smells strange on your fingers, that even goats won’t taste it;

Folded upon itself, enclosed like any Mohammedan woman,

Its nakedness all within-walls, its flowering forever unseen,

One small way of access only, and this close-curtained from the light;

Fig, fruit of the female mystery, covert and inward,

Mediterranean fruit, with your covert nakedness,

Where everything happens invisible, flowering and fertilization, and fruiting

In the inwardness of your you, that eye will never see

Till it’s finished, and you’re over-ripe, and you burst to give up your ghost.

Till the drop of ripeness exudes,

And the year is over.

And then the fig has kept her secret long enough.

So it explodes, and you see through the fissure the scarlet.

And the fig is finished, the year is over.

That’s how the fig dies, showing her crimson through the purple slit

Like a wound, the exposure of her secret, on the open day.

Like a prostitute, the bursten fig, making a show of her secret.

That’s how women die too.

The year is fallen over-ripe,

The year of our women.

The year of our women is fallen over-ripe.

The secret is laid bare.

And rottenness soon sets in.

The year of our women is fallen over-ripe.

When Eve once knew in her mind that she was naked

She quickly sewed fig-leaves, and sewed the same for the man.

She’d been naked all her days before,

But till then, till that apple of knowledge, she hadn’t had the fact on her mind.

She got the fact on her mind, and quickly sewed fig-leaves.

And women have been sewing ever since.

But now they stitch to adorn the bursten fig, not to cover it.

They have their nakedness more than ever on their mind,

And they won’t let us forget it.

Now, the secret

Becomes an affirmation through moist, scarlet lips

That laugh at the Lord’s indignation.

What then, good Lord! cry the women.

We have kept our secret long enough.

We are a ripe fig.

Let us burst into affirmation.

They forget, ripe figs won’t keep.

Ripe figs won’t keep.

Honey-white figs of the north, black figs with scarlet inside, of the south.

Ripe figs won’t keep, won’t keep in any clime.

What then, when women the world over have all bursten into affirmation?

And bursten figs won’t keep ?

Challah! Or, the Baking Cycle of Life and Death

My first attempt at making a loaf of bread was successful, due to a great recipe with crystal clear instructions. I also found the "lessons" at The Fresh Loaf really helpful - I don't think it's necessary to bake the "homework," but the principles listed in these lessons are good for an understanding of what's going on in the dough, and what all this rising and kneading business is all about. For example:

Here, in my little dough ball, the yeast has just been activated by warm water and kneading, and all around it yummy food is to be had: sugar, flour, egg. It's come back to life and is about to eat! It's alive, aliiiiiive.

Only 20 minutes later, the dough ball has puffed up - the yeast has been busy gobbling up the food around it and emitting gas while it eats. Yes, my dough is full of yeast fart now. Mmmmm. I kept punching down the dough every 20 minutes (as instructed) to release the gas. The yeast would keep puffing the dough back up. The longer and more slowly a bread is let to rise the more flavor it develops, because of all that yeast activity.

I've taken 1/3 out of the dough and braided it into a small braid and the rest into the larger braid. This is after 2 hours of rising and punching down.

Lay the braids on top of each other, brush with egg for a nice shiny crust. Now this is the part that seems somewhat cruel (but not really) to me. When I put the dough in the oven, the yeast goes crazy in its growth, because the temperature is so high. This causes the "spring" in a loaf of bread, that makes that great initial puff in its size. But then the temperature is so high that, of course, the yeast then dies. So, the process of baking bread is basically bringing something to life, making it work for you, then killing it off. Then you feed yourself and those around you with this whole cycle of resurrection and death. My question is: who thought this bizarre idea up in the first place?

Ta da!

Challah bread is great because it's nice and rich and stays soft for days.

I made toast out of the challah loaf this morning. And I thought, "I made that toast. I mean, I literally made it!" It's a gratifying feeling for not very much work.

Brezeln!

In honor of the Germany vs. Spain Euro Final, I tried my hand at making my first yeast bread by baking Brezeln, or, as we know them, pretzels. It's actually quite easy, and the recipe I found seemed pretty authentic. Unfortunately, Germany lost - but the food was good!

The dough is easy to work with and shapes well.

Before baking, the brezeln need to be boiled in water and baking soda,
kinda like the way bagels are, to produce that chewy goodness.

Here they are, all puffed up and cute
and sprinkled with coarse sea salt.

They really do puff out of control...next time I make

these I'll make them skinnier to begin with.

Here it accompanies some typical German fare: Leberkäse
(literally "liver cheese" in modern parlance, but really meant to
indicate something like "meat loaf," though not at all like our
American version, as you can see) and German potato salad,
which is sans mayo - it's made with vinegar, oil, and mustard.
Bier, of course, is a necessary part of the meal. Any meal.