But will they transport me back to breakfast in Santorini?

I tried to do my taxes yesterday. I have to file in 3 states. I don't know what crazy person invented the tax code, but it is mind boggling to me that I owe Delaware $100 but get money back from Ohio. Pennsylvania and I are apparently square. But this post is not about taxes. It is about temperature measuring. I finally buckled under pressure and bought a Thermapen. These things are like the fanciest pants thermometer in the world; foodies love them, nuclear physicists love them (I assume they have to measure reactors and things), sides of beef love them. They also cost $89. They don't go on sale. So it came in the mail on Thursday, from England via the distributor in Utah. I have been trying to decide what it's maiden voyage will be, after measuring the ambient temperature in my apartment and the temperature of my fingertips; both hovered at 68 degrees. I may or may not have mentioned that I recently bought two pounds of yeast at Costco because (a) it seemed like a good value and (b) one of my goals for 2012 is to increase the amount of baking I do with yeast. It is always important to measure the temperature of water used to proof yeast so I decided I would kill two birds with one stone and make a yeast bread recipe this morning. I am carefully ignoring the voice in my head that is reminding me that I have never measured the temperature of the liquid used to proof yeast in my life, other than by sticking my finger in and seeing if it felt lukewarm. This method, although inexact, has largely been successful. So I decided to make pain au chocolat. I've been on a French bread making kick recently and made brioche a few weekends ago (without the thermometer, the horror)! I did some googling and the Jacques Torres recipe seems to be popular. The best part? His recipe calls for cold water to proof the yeast. No thermometer required. Of course. I'm going to do it anyway. I might even take some pictures.

The month of December in brief

Heavens to Betsy! A 31 day lag. I tried to write approximately 12 Christmas posts which all sounded trite. The gist of them: give back to others during the holiday season (and all throughout the year, really). I have a lot to be grateful for, when many others are struggling and that is never more noticeable than during the holidays.

Since my last post, my sister turned 29 + 1 and that brought me back to the east coast for the first time since I left. Now, I have never lived in NYC, but lots of friends (and one sister) have, and I have been there many times. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had chosen NYC like all the other VC grads, instead of Boston after college, but we will never know... So I have really been enjoying Cincinnati and not been too east-coast-homesick, but when I flew into NYC, it pulled at my heartstrings and I felt a pang of jealousy for all those people who got to stay on the coast. We toured NBC Studios and the page told us some tales about Dr. Oz and his talk show, including the swab he did of the bottom of a lady's purse that was germier than a NYC toilet and had 2 different strains of Hepatitis on it. Later that night/early the next morning I was strolling down the sidewalk and slipped on a laminated menu on the sidewalk. All I thought as my bum hit the sidewalk was, eww, I wonder if I am as a germy as the purse now. And then I was kind of ready to leave the big city and head back to my Midwestern semi-suburban life...

Christmas came and went, my brother and I sustained a well-deserved loss in the annual gingerbread house decorating contest. The Christmas craft project was successful, and the sweatshop was much more productive and efficient than in years prior. Keep an eye out for the link to the Etsy shop! We saw the house where The Christmas Story was filmed, on a street full of houses with leg lamps in the window. We had a snowball fight, and made a snow lady, and went for a lovely, if not freezing cold walk in the Metroparks.

And then I tore myself away from my home (the DSM-V is rumored to have adult separation anxiety as a diagnosis and I will proudly be first in line for that one), made the drive back to Cincinnati, slept for 3 hours, and made a 6 am flight to Albuquerque (which I have practiced spelling) to see a friend from grad school and celebrate the New Year.

I love green chiles. I have always loved green chiles. I should move to New Mexico because they have a lot of them there. We had breakfast at Frontier, famous for many things including their green chile hash browns. I literally could have eaten a bucket full of them but was trying not to appear to be a huge fatty, and because I knew I would eat well over the next few days. My friend and her boyfriend have an impeccably well stocked kitchen. She has traded out her Kitchen Aid mixer (over which we bonded when I stayed with her during grad school interviews) for a Cuisinart stand mixer, which I will forgive, but what I cannot forgive is the assertion that Thomas Keller's chocolate chip cookies are better than my Rolo Chocolate Chip Cookies. Thomas Keller should stick to French Bistro cooking and leave the lowly chocolate chip cookie to me. We had a spa day, visited the Albuquerque Costco, ate grilled pizza, went to Sante Fe, ate blue corn enchiladas at Maria's, stopped in the heroin capital of the US for a bathroom break, and arrived in Taos at twilight on New Year's Eve. My friend made me sleep in the garage. We woke up at 7.30 am to go skiing at Angel Fire. I had not been skiing since my very early 20s. I am not sporty. I worry about injury on a daily basis. I asked the ski technicians if they had a padded suit I could wear. I jokingly complained about skiing and head injuries and broken legs. One guy, who looked like he hadn't showered or slept in days, said, "Are you familiar with the power of the mind?" I said, "I am," and wondered what piece of stoner wisdom was coming my way, and he said, "It's really powerful." Why yes, sir, yes it is. I donned my helmet and rode the chair lift up, got off the lift, stood on the precipice, and skied down the mountain. And loved it.

And so, with the mountains of New Mexico as my inspiration, 2012 will be a year without complaints and fear. I will do the things I think I cannot do, I will learn from them, and I will confront the voice in my head that tells me it will be okay to put it off til tomorrow. The irony of the fact that I was supposed to take a Pure Barre class at 12 and it is 12.31 and I am typing this does not escape my notice. I will totally go to a class tomorrow.

Turkey, traffic, and textiles

Last Thanksgiving, I drove from Philly into NYC via the Lincoln Tunnel, picked up my sister on the Upper West Side, drove back through the Lincoln Tunnel, and we continued on our way to Ohio. Lots of traffic, but I don't mind the Lincoln Tunnel, despite the lack of organization to the merge. I foolishly believed that upon moving to Ohio and leaving behind the most congested portion of the 95 corridor, my Thanksgiving travel would be a breeze. The drive between Cincinnati and Cleveland looks really innocuous; bucolic farmland, Columbus to break things up in the middle, outlet malls, truck stop after truck stop after truck stop, flat and generally pretty boring. And totally unpredictably crazy, stop-and-go, Lincoln Tunnelish traffic.

I had the best intentions of blogging Thanksgiving dinner, which obviously did not pan out because I spent half the day chopping root vegetables. The essence:
Successful turkey! Not dry, cooked all of the way through, tasted good. Science and methodical recipe research do pay off.
We made lamb tongues, a popular Syrian dish around the holidays. They don't taste like chicken.
My favorite pie crust recipe
I made French macarons that looked pretty and tasted better, despite all the drama on the blogs that they are très impossible!
I bought a mandoline (the slicer, not the instrument) and attractively and creatively sliced an apple, since we were all out of root vegetables.
I knitted 2 1/2 hats.

I was and am thankful for many people and things this Thanksgiving holiday, except for the rain and traffic that prevented me from getting back to Cincinnati in time to have knitted 3 hats.

Göksel that was a good time!

The Turkish bagels were gross- they went in the garbage. So so disappointed. I spent an hour on Facebook at work trying to find the concierge at our hotel so he could tell me the recipe. It turns out that Göksel is a super popular Turkish name. Who knew. So I made myself feel better by making chocolate chip cookies stuffed with Rolos. It is only because of intense will power that I did not eat all of them at one time. They are deliciousness in a cookie.

I'm going to Cincinnati tomorrow to look at rental houses and/or apartments. I'm both excited and feeling sad as my time in Philly grows shorter and shorter. There is a big upside to Ohio though. You can buy both buy wine at the grocery store and have it shipped to your home. It's the small things.

A funny fitting sweater

I just spent two weeks on vacation, which was completely delicious. The vacation post will arrive when the jet lag has settled and I can put my thoughts and photos together. For now, it feels so strange to be back for two reasons. The first, obviously, is that I am no longer on vacation. The second, is that in less than two months, I am moving. I am at that weird point in a transition where I feel unsettled and that I don't really belong in Philly anymore. I'm going to ponder over that for a while. However, it is also possible that I feel this way because this was not my view when I awoke this morning:

Who wants to make me a Continental breakfast buffet and provide me with a towel and a beach chair?

European Vacation

It is hard to blog on vacation! I have so much to report on, but internet has generally been spotty (I'm out on our porch in the bright sunlight with a towel over my head and the computer in an attempt to get a clear signal). Since my last post, in short:
a visit to Cemberlitas Hamam, a Turkish bath (google it, and substitute older, hairier, naked ladies for the pictures they use as advertising), the Blue Mosque, a brief trip to Asia, Hagia Sophia, a ride face down on the floor of a taxi because it is illegal for taxis in Istanbul to carry more than 4 passengers, many accidentally ordered dishes with unrecognizable ingredients, always labeled "Sultan's favorite." The sultan and I do not have the same food tastes, sadly. An amazing four days on Santorini, in a hotel that requires 200 steps up to get to the town square. It's good, it helps burn off the daily baklava. A donkey ride up some stairs to get to Oia (eek!), a hike up the side of a volcano at noon (hot), a lovely but crowded sunset in Oia, a visit to a black sand beach (they're really pebbles), lots of Greek salad (no lettuce, so much better), a hydrofoil ride from Santorini to Paros in high winds (vomtown), and now here I am in Nauossa (Paros) on a deck typing a blog post. Pictures and updates to follow when I get home. Keep your fingers crossed that whole debt crisis/IMF mess in Athens doesn't impact my ability to continue to eat feta cheese.

Constantinople

Istanbul is quıte an entertaining city so far! I am blogging from our hotel lobby, and it is ınterestıng to see what keys come up as I touch type that I am going to have to go back and fix later so this post doesn,t end up looking like a bunch of symbols. Which it might anyway. I can,t figure out the apostrophe either way. We have seen all of the important sıghts/sites and some others that were entertaining but not in the guide books, including a ride in a taxi where I had to hide because it is illegal to have more than four people per car... I think my favorite so far was the Turkish ice cream vendor who put on a big show serving the ice cream (think Hibachi grill style), flung a blob in my hair,and still charged us the tourist rate, which was about four times the rate he charged the Turkish girl who arrived next. Ah to be an American abroad.

I'm the president of Turkish chai!

...or something that sounds like that but probably makes more sense if you actually understand Turkish while attempting to negotiate the bill for dinner. Which was a delicious meal for five, but for quite a bit of time yesterday it appeared my sister would be flying to Istanbul solo since I got stranded in Philly and my parents and brother were stuck in Cleveland. I made it to JFK shortly before our connecting flight to Istanbul thanks in large part to the fact it is only actually a twenty minute flight. I'm sort of surprised they even fly it. The Clevelanders however, had two cancelled flights, a double secret rebooking on another flight, a high-speed race from LGA to JFK, and managed to arrive in Istanbul with remarkable grace only four hours after we did. So far my big adventure today was taking a nap; international travel tuckers me out. Tomorrow I'm going to convince my brother to ask people how to get to Constantinople. Time for bed before the our next door neighbor the Blue Mosque's early morning call to prayer... not mentioned in the Trip Advisor review, shockingly.

Choose your own shoe adventure

I have intense decision making problems. Mostly about small meaningless decisions rather than big. Big decisions I just go with my jungle instincts. Small decisions I needlessly agonize over. Restaurants? You're guaranteed I will send the waiter away twice before I am ready. I require time to develop a delicate balance between the main dish, its side options, appetizers, what other people are getting so I can have a taste, and how excited I am about the dessert menu. Sometimes I feel the need to make marks on a menu so I can keep track of my decisions. I've always been like this. When I was younger, I couldn't just read a Choose Your Own Adventure book like a normal child. I had to go back and forth to determine every possible permutation of the storyline. Quite sad. I don't think I ever actually got through a story because I was always curious what would have happened if I had chosen the other choice. And then given the mini bit of attention problems, I'd lose track and have to start over again.

I am going on a big vacation this weekend that requires non-sneaker comfortable footwear for walking. I'm a big fan of Reef flip flops but they don't stand up well for any sort of volcano hiking or Grecian ruins climbing. My mom suggested European walking shoes... not my style.

My regular sneakers are great, but bulky, and would look goofy if thrown on with a skirt. Sort of evocative of the HR rep walking to work in the 80s. I decided I wanted mesh sneakers like my friend has and embarked on a mission to find them. Google let me down and they do not appear to be made anymore.

After HOURS of scrolling through sneakers on Zappo's and DSW, I found these. I ordered, they arrived, and they were missing shoe tongues. Weird, but kind of Euro-ish, so I went with it. But something didn't feel right; I went back to where the path diverged and ordered a second and microscopically different pair of Skechers.

But these arrived instead. Flashy! And a little too sparkly. But they had a shoe tongue, so that was an improvement. I took them all into work for a poll. The first pair won by a mile. The light blue ones were described as crass. Point taken. So I went to DSW this weekend to return them, and found them in different, less crass colors. So here I am in DSW with like 6 pairs of the almost-exact-same sneaker obsessing over which one to buy. And then I turn, and I see these.

And I love them. They make me feel like a very spry ninja. I spent more time thinking about my footwear for this vacation than I did about college, grad school, and job decisions. Sort of pitiful. But pink ninja shoes are totally worth it.