you may say it's hoarding, but i call it being prepared, like a girl scout. a girl scout who is trying to earn her merit badge in hoarding.

What I brought to my one-day-a-week job for lunch today. And by lunch I mean

lunch,

Roasted Beet Salad With Almond Butter and Gorgonzola

afternoon snack,

Fruit and yogurt

dinner,

Greens with red-wine vinaigrette

A roasted-vegetable tart I plan to tell you about later this week, assuming I make it out of here alive.

dessert,


and midnight snack.


You may laugh, but if the apocalypse occurs while I'm at my one-day-a-week job and we are all trapped indefinitely in this office, my coworkers will be forced to live off the rotten leftovers polluting the staff fridge while I eat...well, nothing, because my food will be gone well before Armageddon and, come hell or high water, I am not touching anything in that nasty-ass refrigerator. Next week I think I'll supplement my lunch spread with MREs and powdered milk. Just in case.

the sweet taste of not being bitter that it's winter, because I'm pretty sure WINTER IS OVER, BITCHES!

The first strawberry of the year. And I still have eleven apples left in my refrigerated hoarding chamber! Although I've decided that my collection of apples is not hoarding at all. When people of yore (and homesteading hipsters of today) preserved and canned and filled their root cellars with turnips and rutabagas, it was not called hoarding, it was called trying to survive winter. I hoarded stored apples to survive winter. And now I will enjoy the hell out of summer. Unless it rains a lot, in which case I will take to my bed and weep.

memorandum

To: All Staff

From: Senior Mgmt.

Re: Hoarding

Apples
Effective immediately, the Department of Crisper Control will cease hoarding apples. According to our calculations, winter ended after today's snowfall, and a growth forecast indicates that the current supply of 26 honey crisps should last until strawberry season. God help us if these calculations are incorrect.

Muriel Spark
A committee has been formed to decide whether or not to hoard books by Muriel Spark. A preliminary report from the committee lists the following pro and con. Pro: The two novels studied by the committee thus far (The Girls of Slender Means and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) were amazing. Con: She's written 20+ novels, and they can't possibly all be this good. Or can they? Further study is needed.


Lucky Lady Design
It has come to our attention that Lucky Lady, senior assistant vice executive manager for commenting, has set up an Etsy shop. Although moonlighting is forbidden in her contract, after days of round-the-clock union negotiations it has been decided that instead of terminating her position here at GFD, an official policy of hoarding Lucky Lady's wares will be adopted, specifically headbands in pretty fabrics and belts with cool vintage buckles. She also makes super-cute aprons that will soon be part of the strict dress code in GFD kitchens, but demand currently outpaces supply.



KMO/cam

131 memory lane, apt. 306

This week we'll take a little wander down memory lane, if you don't mind. I've been sick and tired for the past two days (not in a "I'm sick and tired, goddammit!" kind of way; I'm literally sick and literally tired, goddammit), and I can't seem to muster a post. I spent much of the most beautiful weekend of the year thus far (sunny, breezy, 70s and 80s) on my couch drinking tea, reading magazines, and eating koulouria. (There may also have been a little whining and copious amounts of nose blowing involved.)


The koulouria are on memory lane. You can read about them here.

And so are the magazines: I read three from this pile on Saturday.


Now I'm going to pop half a Benadryl (which acts on me like an elephant tranquilizer would on someone else) and travel the well-worn path from the couch to my bed.

holiday dessert wishlist item #5: satsuma mandarins 4-eva

Did you think the holidays were over, darlings? Well they may be for you, but I won't be dragging myself over the holiday-season finish line until this weekend. So I thought I'd tell you about the little fruit that has kept me company over the past several weeks. No, I'm not talking about the yachstman; the little fruit I'm referring to is called a satsuma mandarin.


I should begin by noting that, as a rule, fruit does not qualify as dessert unless it has been doctored, for example baked in a buckle, muddled with sugar and served between the halves of warm shortcake, or topped with honey-sweetened Greek yogurt. But these little shizzles are special, and over the past month or so I've eaten them for breakfast, brunch, elevenses, lunch, post-nap snack, tea, supper, dinner, dessert, and midnight snack, among the other meals I consume daily.

I had my first satsuma mandarin a few weeks ago at my Greek stepmother's. I was assigned to peel them for a salad she was making, and for every section that went into the salad, four or five landed in my mouth. On my way home that night I stopped at the market and bought a few. Dozen. I bought a few dozen, OK?

The next time I went to the store I bought a few (dozen) more. Because who knew how long they'd be in season? And I was sure that as soon as word spread about how delicious they are, a Walmart-style stampede into the store would ensue, shoppers crushing each other underfoot to get the last of the satsuma mandarins while I was safe at home, hiding under my bed, eating tiny oranges. (Tiny oranges that taste like candy! And don't have seeds!)


This compulsive purchasing of oranges went on until we left town for the holidays, at which point I packed my hoard into a cooler and took them on a little tour of the Eastern Seaboard. I ate numerous satsuma mandarins on our sixteen-hour drive to North Carolina. Satsuma mandarins were there for me during the Christmas Day ice storm that left us without power or heat or running water. And I ate satsuma mandarins as we fled North Carolina in search of a place with a working toilet, namely the Shus in Maryland.


Satsuma mandarins saved me from scurvy when we arrived in Maryland and, too exhausted/lazy to move from my chair next to the fireplace, I relied for days on yachtsman-prepared meals of pizza, biscuits, and popcorn (the yachtsman didn't actually pop the corn, but he did open the bag). And when we ran out of hot chocolate to mix with the rum on our New Year's Eve boat ride, someone came up with the brilliant idea of soaking sections of fruit in a mug of liquor and eating those (god forbid we just stop drinking; another wizard put a stick of gum in his mouth, took a swig of rum, and called it a mojito, but that's a story for another bl*g post entirely).


I savored the last few of my satsuma mandarins on our drive back to Vermont, peeling back the thin skin and feeding sections to the yachtsman as he steered us through the blizzard that dumped nearly three feet of snow in Burlington. And the next day when we waded through the knee-deep snow to the store for supplies, I was surprised to see...satsuma mandarins. They were a little wizened and on sale, but, shockingly, still available.

Let the hoarding begin again.

holiday dessert wishlist item #3: the parade of peppermint and chocolate marches on

Did you know I have folders full of pages pulled from Martha Stewart Living, tasteful crafts I will never do and recipes I will never make? Does this confirm your suspicion that I'm a hoarder? Because I think of myself as an archivist. An archivist with a sore, throbbing finger from holding a pen while proofreading: 11 hours today, 9 yesterday, 10.5 on Saturday ... shall I go on? Frankly, I'm not sure I have the strength.


Perhaps one of these Chocolate-Peppermint Cookies, from the December 2008 issue of MS Living, would revive me. Or perhaps not. On the one hand, I don't really like white chocolate; on the other, they're so pretty! And they feature what is apparently one of my very favorite flavor combinations (right up there with chocolate and peanut butter, two great tastes that taste great together).

But this is a dessert wishlist, so I don't have to be practical (see four-layer collapsing cake, below) or worry that I don't like one of the main ingredients. I'm never going to make these cookies—they look nearly impossible, and I can barely type with this gimpy finger, let alone make cookie dough, roll it out, cut it, bake it, melt the chocolate, dip the cookies in the chocolate, and sprinkle the whole mess with candy bits.

My only hope is that they will appear on my countertop like Jesus was born to Mary in the manger, a sort of virgin baking event wherein I sit chastely in my kitchen doing nothing but end up with a plate of cookies. A real Christmas miracle.

your crack-addicted pet monkey could make this tart

For weeks it's been tomatoes this, blight that. I've read articles about tomato blight, heard blight gossip and conjecture from gardening friends, and spent many a sleepless night in terror of impending tomato doom. But it all culminated rather dramatically this past weekend at the farmers market, where I overheard actual farmers who grow actual tomatoes for an actual living saying they were "ripping everything up" and that it might be "the last week for tomatoes." In a frenzy of paranoia and greed, I ran from vendor to vendor buying tomatoes.


Lots of tomatoes. It's called hoarding; I'm not proud. But winter's closing in (it may be August where you live, but in Vermont it's dipping into the 40s this week), and I'm not going gentle into that good night without first gorging on tomatoes.

Usually my tomato feeding starts in late July with sun golds, peaks with heirlooms in August, and ends with fried green tomatoes in the fall. This year, all bets are off. From now until they're gone, it's tomatoes for every meal (in part because I've spent our entire food budget on them; sorry, honey). I've been slicing and eating them with a little olive oil and balsamic, putting them in salads, biting into them like apples, popping little ones in my mouth as if they were candy. And tonight I actually turned on my oven for the first time in months and cooked.


I was scared the first time I attempted this Tomato–Goat Cheese Tart with Herbed Crust. Specifically, I was afraid of the crust. I don't get along well with dough (or batter, for that matter). Dough is fussy and particular, and I'm not good at following recipes, which seems to be the first rule of baking: Follow the recipe. Exactly. But I've made this tart several times, failed to followed the recipe exactly (usually inadvertently), and the crust has been tasty every time. What I'm trying to say is that if I can make this crust, you can make this crust. In fact, this crust is so easy, if you actually know something about baking, you could probably make a Tomato–Goat Cheese Tart with Herbed Crust while drunk. In the dark. With both arms tied behind your back. For example, if an intruder cut the electricity to your house, broke in, tied you up, and forced you to drink an entire bottle of pink wine, you could still bake this tart. Think about this when you're awake at 3 a.m. fretting over tomato blight.

Tomato–Goat Cheese Tart with Herbed Crust
Adapted from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen

Ingredients
For the crust
1¼ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
½–1 teaspoon minced, fresh herb [not that kind of herb; I'm thinking rosemary, though tonight I used basil, and oregano and thyme would also be nice]
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold, unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
4–5 tablespoons water

For the filling
6–8 ounces fresh goat cheese [tonight I used Doe’s Leap; the last time I made this tart we lived in DC and I used Pipe Dreams, which I think you can find all over the East Coast, but any fresh, soft goat cheese will do]
3 medium tomatoes (~1¼ pounds), cored, sliced about ¼–½ inch thick, and blotted dry with paper towels
1 tablespoon evoo
s&p

Directions
For the crust
1. Don't be scared!

2. Place the flour, salt, and herb in a food processor and pulse several times to combine.

3. Add the butter and pulse until you have pea-sized crumbs, about ten 1-second pulses.

4. Add the water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and pulse briefly after each addition. After you've added 4 tablespoons of water, process the dough for several seconds to see if it will come together. Chances are, it will not. Don't be scared! Add the remaining tablespoon of water and process just until the dough comes together in a rough ball. This ball might be very rough. In fact it may not be a ball at all, and some bits may not be incorporated. Don't be scared! But don't overprocess the dough! Or your crust won't be flaky (and that's fine too; the first time I made this crust I was determined to get a ball, goddammit, which involved adding extra water and processing the hell out of that dough, and it was still good, or as the hippies say, "It's all good, man," to which I reply, "Put down the hookah and take a bath").

5. Transfer the dough to your counter and knead it briefly to form a smooth ball (this recipe is obsessed with balls!). Flatten the dough into a 5-inch disk (the first time I made this, I took out my measuring tape to make sure my overprocessed disk of dough was five inches; don't bother), and wrap it in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least one hour, up to two days.

6. Make sure one of the racks is in the middle of the oven and preheat to 375˚.

7. Unwrap the chilled dough and on a lightly floured surface roll the dough into a circle that is a couple of inches larger than your tart pan. The original recipe calls for a 10-inch tart pan and a 12-inch circle of dough. I use an 11-inch pan and roll my dough into a spastic amoeba that in some spots is 13ish inches, in others not so much, and tell myself that if it doesn't work out, we'll just eat the filling.

8. Lay your amoeba over your 10- or 11-inch tart pan with a removable bottom (why the bottom needs to be removable, I don't know) and tuck it into the bottom and sides of the pan. If it's short in places, tear dough from other spots and smush it into places where you're short. It's an amoeba. You can't hurt it. Run the rolling pin over the top of the tart pan to trim the excess dough, if there is any excess dough; I've usually used mine to patch my amoeba. Prick the bottom of the tart shell all over with a fork. Or forget to do so until the tart is filled and in the oven, then yell, "F*ck f*ck f*ck" over and over until your husband runs into the room and asks, "What's wrong?" Tell him you ruined dinner. He'll be so excited to discover you did not!

For the filling and baking
1. Scatter the goat cheese evenly across the bottom of the tart shell. If you're using a 10-inch pan, use 6 ounces of cheese. If your pan is larger, like mine, or you're really into cheese, use closer to 8 ounces.

2. Arrange the tomatoes over the cheese in two rings—one around the outer edge and another in the center, slightly overlapping the tomato slices as you go. Drizzle the tomatoes with the oil and sprinkle with s&p.


3. Bake until the edges of the crust pull away from the sides of the pan and are golden brown, 40–50 minutes. Cool the tart on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes, or wait longer and eat it later, at room temperature.



THE YACHTSMAN'S RECIPE RATING AND NOTES
4.5 out of 5 entree stars
["I found it very ... I thought it was ... it had nice flavor, it was cooked perfectly, the crust was deliciously flaky. A nice summer meal."]