The Best Pancakes You Will Ever Make

Posted on January 9, 2023 by Kathy

I made the Best Pancakes this morning. That’s according to an Epicurious YouTube video hosted by the affable chef Frank Proto, which I watched yesterday.

I realize I’ve written about pancakes before. Now I’ve added a fifth recipe card to my collection, which doesn’t even count the tried-and-true Betty Crocker cookbook version I’ve recently been using.

Chef Proto is very convincing. Watch the video and see. He’s stern but also encouraging. His recipe differs from my others in that he adds vinegar (instead of lemon juice, as I have been doing), more sugar, and vanilla. These last ingredients make for a delicious fragrance as you stand over the griddle.

The major learning outcome for me, though, was the importance of not over-mixing. I knew this already, of course, but Chef Proto is very, very emphatic. After mixing the batter, he looks at the camera and repeats, “No more mixing,” and shakes his rubber spatula at you. He leaves many lumps, many large lumps, in his batter. I have always been careful to do this myself, I thought, but I was not careful enough. This morning I made myself stop mixing and leave very many lumps.

The result was airy, fluffy pancakes—the goal I have been striving for. My pancakes looked exactly the same as Chef Proto’s. Because of the vanilla, sugar, and probably the vinegar, they are also quite tasty. I lacked only whipped salted butter, which Chef Proto slathered on his stack in memory of his grandmother.

My own taste testers’ response was, shall we say, underwhelming. My son and husband dug in to their pancakes without comment. After a little chewing, I asked, “What do you think?” They mumbled that they were good.

Then, “Thick,” my husband said.

I let a few minutes go by. “Are you saying they’re too thick?” I asked.

My husband looked like he wished he were somewhere else. “They’re fine,” he said, using the all-purpose adjective that is no help whatsoever.

He added, “You know, I like thin pancakes, too.”

I cannot rely on other people’s approval to evaluate my achievements. I needn’t look to others for validation. I have striven to produce thick fluffy pancakes, and I have at last done so. I have made the grade and cut the mustard. I have prevailed.

The Best Pancakes You Will Ever Make
3 cups flour
¼ cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoon salt          Mix first 5 dry ingredients in large bowl.
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
2 ¼ cups milk
¼ cup oil
1 tablespoon vanilla
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
3 eggs
Whisk liquid ingredients thoroughly. Fold them into the dry ingredients. Mix gently, and leave lumps. When you stop mixing, stop mixing. No more mixing. Melt(whipped, salted) butter on griddle. Drop large tablespoons of batter on the griddle. Turn when bubbles have mostly popped. Your pancakes are done when you press gently and the pancake springs back.
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More Bill Cunningham

Posted on January 7, 2023 by Kathy

In Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better (1976), John Holt wrote, “A life worth living, and work worth doing–that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called ‘a better education.’”

Holt is known mainly as an education writer and reformer of the 1960s and 70s, like James Herndon, Jonathan Kozol, and others. He dived deep into educational issues and used his own life and pursuits to try to figure out what education was really for. Somewhere—I can’t find the line right now–he stated baldly that the goal of education and of life itself is to find our work.

By work, Holt did not mean a job, or not necessarily. He meant something like Joseph Campbell’s “finding your bliss.” A person, for example, might be the best, most joyful cab driver in the world, blessed in having found the perfect job, the perfect work. Another might be a competent cab driver who spends every off hour playing piano, coaching youth soccer, creating luscious dishes in the kitchen, or solving the world’s most nagging mathematical problems. Both people have found their work, one in a job and one in an avocation.

This “finding your work” is not a definable goal with a finite deadline. It may happen when you’re a child, like a little girl who knows she’ll be a pediatrician and successfully achieves that goal. For most people, though, finding your work is a process. A person takes tentative steps that feel right at a given moment and eventually, with luck and persistence, arrives at fulfilling and bliss-giving activities. A person falls in love, marries, and finds joy and fulfillment in creating a welcoming and loving home. Such a person had found his or her (or their) life’s work.

My husband is a good example. He loved movies from his childhood and teen years. In college, he majored in English and Theater and Film, making some small movies in the process. Gradually, he realized that creating films might not be his path and wrote about them instead, for his college newspaper and after graduation for small publications. This gave some satisfaction but still wasn’t quite it. He realized that he loved sharing movies. What he wanted to do and what he was good at was curating films. He ran film programs at local libraries and eventually co-founded the Cleveland Cinematheque. By taking small steps, following his bliss, he built a career–not blissful in every moment, to be sure–but creative and ultimately soul-satisfying.

We spent half of our honeymoon traveling in Alaska, and we both remember the young woman driving our tour bus in Denali National Park. We said to each other, “That guide is in the right job.” As she surveyed the vast distances of wilderness, pointing out moose outside our windows, she exuded a quiet joy; she was right where she belonged. My own modest position as an adjunct faculty at Cleveland State teaching Latin was finally, after years of teaching at all the lower levels, where I felt at home. Writing plus teaching plus raising my family were my work.

All this is a very roundabout way of returning to last weekend’s subject, the photographer and fashion journalist Bill Cunningham. And a roundabout way of explaining why he fascinates. Despite his disapproving conservative Boston family, he moved to New York and began designing avant-garde, wildly creative hats. He was obsessed with fashion. He saw clothing as a manifestation of our culture and as an expression, often a beautiful expression, of individuality. His camera recorded thousands and thousands of people wearing interesting clothes, as he pedaled around New York City on his bike wearing his little blue jacket.

Like John Holt, who became a skilled amateur musician in his later years (Never Too Late, 1978), our Denali bus driver, John Ewing, and even me in a small way, Bill Cunningham found his work. The collection Bill Cunningham, On the Street: Five Decades of Iconic Photographs (2019) is a stunning but only partial record of his work and his spirit.

What do you think? Have you found your work? Or do you find the whole idea simplistic, reductive, elitist? Let us know.

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A Sense of Humors

Posted on January 4, 2023 by Kathy
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

From ancient times well into the 19th century, Westerners believed that four bodily fluids governed human personality and health. These fluids, called humors, derived from the four elements–earth, fire, water, and air—because these four elements composed everything. The Latin word humor meant “moisture,” as in our English word humid. Stereotypes in drama and even our own sitcoms represent the four personality types connected with the four humors. (Or humours to the spelling-challenged Brits.)

The element earth presented in the body as black bile, the first of the four humors. An excess of this humor created depression. The Greek word melankolia, in fact, referred to black bile. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the melancholy Dane, clearly had too much black bile in his system.  

Excessive fire equated with yellow bile, or choler, creating aggressiveness and anger. Petruchio describes the fiery Katherine as “choleric” in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Our word bilious, meaning “peevish,” is a remnant of this humoral connection.

Phlegm, associated with water, created laziness and indolence. Falstaff was phlegmatic. And in Henry IV, Prince Hal upbraids his lazy companions thusly: “I know you all, and will awhile uphold/The unyoked humour of your idleness.”

Blood was associated with the final element, air, but was believed to contain components of all four elements. If blood is your dominant humor, lucky you! You are courageous and optimistic, like Prince Hal! You have a sanguine, or cheerful, temperament, sanguine deriving from the Latin sanguis, meaning “blood.” The common medical practice of bloodletting was an effort to create an equilibrium among the four humors, a procedure that may have killed George Washington. Bloodletting, shockingly, continued into the 20th century.

In 1598, the Elizabethan playwright Ben Jonson’s comedy Every Man in His Humour, featuring an actor by the name of William Shakespeare, appeared in London, with characters exemplifying the four personality types. More recently, a blog called “My Fan Girl Life” finds the four character types in “Entourage,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Friends,” and other shows. Another writer relates the four Hogwarts houses in the Harry Potter books to the four humors.

The humors and their accompanying temperaments still live.

Humor, of course, has taken on a different meaning in modern English, although the old meaning survives in terms such as aqueous humor, the fluid between the lens and cornea of the eye. Eventually humor began to connote one’s mood or attitude, as in “Our boss was in good humor this morning.” Today’s common understanding of humor may have derived from this connection with a good mood. Or, our conception of humor as something funny may come from its common use in comedies like Jonson’s. Excess humors made people ridiculous.

Medical care based on bodily humors seems primitive to us moderns, but at least it focused on the body itself to diagnose illness, at natural causes as opposed to supernatural causes. It was a step up from blaming curses and demons.

Which temperament best describes you? Are you melancholy, choleric, phlegmatic, or sanguine? Or does it depend on the time of day?

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Combo

Posted on January 3, 2023 by Kathy

I’m not resolving to try new recipes this year. That resolution has never taken hold.

Instead, I tried something new tonight, and I may do so again. It’s not a resolution. It’s just a thing I might do now and then.

This afternoon, I checked out good old Becky at America’s Test Kitchen on YouTube and watched her prepare vegetarian paella, combining (see this post’s title?) cauliflower, green beans, and butter beans. Paella, as you may know, is a Spanish rice dish traditionally cooked in a wide frying pan called a paellera, out of which the diners eat. You don’t need a special pan, however. A large skillet works, and you should feel free to offer diners their own plates.

Saffron and chorizo are frequent additions, and the bottom layer of rice is supposed to brown. My rice browned a little too much but wasn’t crispy, just too brown. I didn’t want to run to the store, so I substituted some ingredients, like black beans. My paella was less authentic, but it tasted okay and was fun to make.

It’s your lucky Monday, because you don’t have to wait until the Wednesday Word post to learn the derivation of paella. (This post is itself a combo!) The Romans called a plate or shallow dish a patera. The diminutive, or small version, of this word is patella. The Latin root of these words is the verb pateo, meaning “to lie open,” like a shallow plate. This verb also gave rise to our words patent and patently, as in, “She was patently (openly, obviously) lying.”

One more etymology for you. Doctors call your kneecap the patella, because it’s shaped like a cute little plate. Remember to share this with the waiter the next time you order paella at a restaurant. I’m sure he will be interested.

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Little Free Book

Posted on January 1, 2023 by Kathy
Photo by Madalyn Cox on Unsplash

Occasionally someone will ask me how I choose what to read. It’s a hard question to answer, because there’s no overriding pattern to my choices.

One book group meets once a month, the other every other month. That makes about eighteen books that are chosen for me, unless I’ve suggested our assigned book myself. Most of these are recent fiction, mixed with some current non-fiction.

People recommend books to me, of course. I’m reading The Overstory, a novel by Richard Powers, because my sister not only told me about it but handed me a copy. I read The Midnight Fox by Betsy Byars because a book group friend told me about it. And sometimes friends have themselves written books. I’ve recently finished Looking for True by Tricia Springstubb (and then wrapped it up for my great-niece) and The Cottage in Omena by Charles Andrew Oberndorf, local writers whom I know. Former Clevelander Kristin Ohlson’s Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World is waiting on my desk.

I avoid reading reviews until I’ve already read the book, but I frequently see titles that interest me in magazines or on the news, or hear about on the radio. If a favorite writer, such Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, or Annie Dillard writes a book, I request it immediately. I guess I like books by “Anns,” no matter the spelling. I sought out Ramadan Ramsay, one of my favorites from last year, because I fondly remembered Louis Edwards’s 1991 novel, Ten Seconds.

Often, I pick up something at the library that grabs my attention. My dad liked Donald Westlake, and when I saw his book Get Real propped up on a library display recently, I checked it out and brought it home.

My current reading is even more serendipitous. I peeked into our neighborhood Little Free Library a few weeks ago and found Fashion Climbing, a 2019 memoir by Bill Cunningham. I didn’t even know Bill Cunningham had written a memoir. But then, no one did, until his manuscript was found in his apartment after his death in 2016.

This delightful book has prompted me to request a collection of his pictures, Bill Cunningham: On the Street: Five Decades of Iconic Photography, and also Bill Cunningham Was There: Spring Flings + Summer Soirées by John Kurdewan–a chain of books inspired by the first. (My husband says I get obsessed.)

This afternoon I rewatched the moving 2011 documentary called Bill Cunningham New York. You don’t have to be interested in Bill Cunningham, New York, fashion, or even photography to enjoy this film. Gentle and well-made, it captures a fascinating person (and a good person) who loved his work and his city. I love this movie.

I’m enjoying Fashion Climbing a great deal but wouldn’t recommend it as highly as the doc. You do require some interest in Bill, NYC, fashion, etc., to stay engaged. He had some great adventures as a hat designer and fashion writer, and (little did I know) as a GI in Europe in the 1950s. Watch the movie first, and then decide.

How do you choose your books? Is your answer as convoluted as mine?

And oh, yes. Happy New Year.

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A Humorous Post

Posted on December 29, 2022 by Kathy
Photo by Chris Kursikowski on Unsplash

The medieval apothecary could not be trusted to prepare prescriptions correctly, remember? (We wrote about this here a couple of weeks ago.) While he might substitute an equally effective medication, he might instead slip a cheaper, even poisonous herb into your vial. That was an ancient and medieval quid pro quo, meaning ”this for that.”

The apothecary’s root word was the Latin apotheca, borrowed from Greek, meaning a storehouse or repository. An apothecary eventually described a warehouse storing herbs and medication, and the person in charge was also known as an apothecary. It was as though the person running a pharmacy was also called a pharmacy.

Pharmacy–another sketchy term. Nowadays, though we may distrust Big Pharma, we mostly trust our pharmacists. However, the Greek root word pharmakeia could mean “a poisonous herb or potion,” as well as something healing.

Of course, in olden times, even if the prescription was correct, it may not have actually been healing. One dubious purpose of early medications was to rid the body of excess humors, that is, the four major fluids in the body—phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood. These humors corresponded to the four elements—water, earth, fire, and air. Too much of any humor caused illness, and the predominance of a particular humor helped create one’s personality. Audiences at the Globe Theater recognized that Shakespeare’s Falstaff, for example, demonstrated an abundance of phlegm.

Are you already wondering about possible connections to some English words in modern usage? Tell us in the comments. If so, you can see that we’re in over our heads for this Wednesday. We’ll wait until the first Wednesday of next year to dive deeper into the four humors and their modern derivatives.

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Another Marvelous Thing

Posted on December 27, 2022 by Kathy

Laurie Colwin wrote memorable, funny novels (Happy All the Time, Family Happiness); ironic, pithy short stories (The Lone Pilgrim and other collections); and two volumes of essays about food: Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen and More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen, derived from her long-running column in Gourmet magazine. She died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 48 in 1992.

Lots of readers came to Laurie Colwin through her food writing. I discovered her food writing in the opposite direction, loving her fiction first. My copy of Home Cooking, a 1990 birthday gift, is now tattered and stained, mostly because of “How to Make Gingerbread,” which I reread every Christmas season. Colwin is writing about actual cake, not gingerbread cookies, as this introductory paragraph makes clear.

I love gingerbread in its true cake form—moist, spongy, and spicy. It is strictly home food, but no one makes it anymore. . .Gingerbread made from scratch takes very little time and gives back tenfold what you put into it. Baking gingerbread perfumes a house as nothing else. It is good eaten warm or cool, iced or plain. It improves with age, should you be lucky or restrained enough to keep any around.

A simple dessert that perfumes your house and improves with age? A generous tablespoon of ground ginger in a nine-inch cake? I had to try it, and now Colwin’s gingerbread is a regular part of our holidays.

I have not yet included the molasses she recommends, Steen’s Pure Ribbon Cane Syrup, which is available online. I will try to acquire by next fall. “You do not need Steen’s to make gingerbread,” Colwin writes, “but I see it as one of life’s greatest delights, a cheap luxury.” Looking forward to next year.

Here is the bare-bones recipe, shorn of Colwin’s delicious description, as shared in the New York Times, but do yourself a favor and check out Home Cooking from the library. Whether you cook or not, you’ll have a delightful reading experience. And then pick up her fiction.

The lovely bow on my gingerbread above is courtesy of Martha Stewart, who tells us how to do it, as she does with so many things. My stencil on a cake or brownies doesn’t exactly impress my friends and family. It makes them smile, because it doesn’t seem like something I would (could) actually do. If I can do it, anyone can!

The holidays aren’t over yet! What are your favorite kitchen creations?

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Honoring the Bleak Midwinter

Posted on December 23, 2022 by Kathy
Photo by David Beale on Unsplash

One of my favorite Christmas carols is “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The verses are by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), an English poet. They were set to music by Gustav Holst in 1906. The Pre-Raphaelites, of whom Rossetti was a part, strove for the simplicity and directness characteristic of artists before the Renaissance (therefore before the artist Raphael). Rossetti’s poem illustrates that simplicity.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan.
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
 
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
 
Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
 
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
 
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

In her day, Rossetti was compared to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, because, of course, they were both girls. Critics disputed who was the superior lady poet. In the 20th century, she was still considered subordinate to her older brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who earned more space in the textbooks. My old Norton Anthology opines, “England, the birthplace of poets, has produced few women poets of note, but of these few Christina Rossetti is perhaps the finest.” Nice of them to say so.

Others have lavished less attenuated praise. In the 1930s, for example, the essayist Basil de Sélincourt called her “probably in the first twelve of the masters of English verse.” Since the 70s or so, Rossetti has undergone an even greater revival, like a lot of women artists. I suspect this renaissance might have encouraged Annie Lennox and Cyndi Lauper (in a lovely straightforward rendition) to record the song.

Here is a more traditional, very beautiful version, by a small chorus called Tenebrae.

What’s your favorite Christmas music?

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The Day the Sun Stands Still

Posted on December 21, 2022 by Kathy
Photo by Hert Niks on Unsplash

Today is the day the sun stops.

Ever since September, as the sun gradually moved south in the sky, the daylight has ineluctably become briefer and the darkness has lengthened. In the culmination of that journey, the night lingers for almost fifteen hours for us in the northern hemisphere.

Finally, on this shortest day, the sun hesitates in its journey south and begins heading in the opposite direction. The solstice marks that moment. The Latin word sol named the sun. Solstice’s second syllable derives from the verb stare, meaning “to stand,” as in status, statue, and stationary. Ancient people, attuned to the sky, noticed that the sun was up to something.

And the sun’s hesitation is something to celebrate, because increasing darkness is ominous, as we in Cleveland well know. Short days don’t bode well for the olive groves or the vineyards. So when we see the sun changing its mind and lengthening the days, we say (if we’re Roman), ”Io Saturnalia!” for the festival of Saturn, an agricultural deity.

 “Yay!” Romans said at this time of year. “Bring out the lights and the greenery! Saturn’s coming back!”

When early Christians wanted to celebrate the birth of Christ, they shouted “Yay!” under cover of the Saturnalia. Scripture doesn’t say when Jesus was born, so the wily Christians incorporated the Saturnalia’s decorating, gift giving, and feasting into their own celebration. What the Roman authorities didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

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Baking Cookies, Remembering Dee

Posted on December 19, 2022 by Kathy

Christmas is a time for joy, but also a time for grief.

Holiday preparations remind me of my mother-in-law, Dee Ewing, who died in 1993. My childhood Christmases were fine, certainly not traumatic, but sometimes strained and stressful. My Christmas nostalgia dates instead from the ‘80s, when I was newly married, and then a new parent, when I spent part of Christmas with the Ewing family.

I’ve written before about a sweater Dee gave me when John and I were dating. That year, she bestowed on all her kids and husband a patchwork sweater. Including me seemed to make me a part of the family. I still keep that worn and torn sweater in a dresser drawer as a memento of her welcoming.

Every November thereafter, Dee would hand me catalogues from L.L. Bean and Land’s End (two companies I had never heard of in my pre-Ewing life) and tell me to pick out what I wanted. The first year or two I checked off three or four items in each book, thinking I was giving Dee a choice. Instead, she’d buy them all. I was more circumspect in my selecting after that, but she never became more circumspect in her buying.

When we had kids, she’d spend a few days before Christmas with us and take the kids to our local big-box toy store. We’d walk up and down the aisles with the kids pointing out what they liked and wanted, which Dee would jot down on a piece of paper. Then she’d go back and purchase them all.

Her Christmas gift wrapping took hours and hours.

Was it too much? Too materialistic? Yes, and yes. Was Dee fortunate to have the money to spend on so many gifts? For sure. But I see Christmas as an outlet for Dee Ewing’s prodigious love and generosity, expressed also in a fully decorated house, dozens of Christmas cookies, and a delicious Christmas dinner.

Dee’s love was a tremendous gift. I wasn’t her daughter. (She already had a beloved daughter.) I was more like a friend and adopted orphan. She loved me and took care of me, and I hope she understood, a little, how much her caring meant to me.

The other day, baking chocolate drop cookies and listening to my favorite cookie-baking music (Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances) brought me to tears. When John walked into the kitchen, I said, “Once again I’m trying to channel Dee Ewing.”

Taking a bite of a cookie, my husband said, “Yours are very good. Not quite the same as my mom’s, though.” I’m going to keep working on it.

Share your holiday griefs and joys below.

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