Don’t Make Me Send in the Word Police

The contraction of “you are” is “you’re.”

It is not “your.”

That is all.

Sherry-Glazed Apple Cake

I’m not a food blogger. I’m certainly no food stylist. I don’t have the skills (read: patience) required to take one of those beautifully lit, perfectly arranged photos that captures the essence of the delectable in question.

For proof, I give you Exhibit A, Sherry-Glazed Apple Cake, a tradition at our Thanksgiving dinners:

The Tastespotting police would be all over this.

But this isn’t about photography. This is about cake. A cake that combines just about everything that’s great about fall all into one delicious bite.

A cake that allows you to pretend you’re eating something “healthy” because it includes fruit and nuts.

A cake that quickly reminds you healthy has gone out the window, what with all the sugar.

And the butter.

Oh yeah, and the booze.

If you look really closely from this angle, you can spot the gap where a chunk of cake stuck to the pan. This is also something of a tradition, albeit an unfortunate one.

This cake began its chapter in our Thanksgiving history the first year we invited our Nashvillian-by-way-of-Guadalajara friends over for a taste of the holiday they normally wouldn’t even be celebrating.

It turns out that one of those friends, Pablo, has a birthday that always falls somewhere in the vicinity of Thanksgiving. Sherry-Glazed Apple Cake became not just the traditional Thanksgiving dessert (along with Helen Corbitt’s pumpkin cheesecake), it became the traditional birthday cake for Pablo.

This cake is the perfect combination of moist, nutty, aromatic and sweet-but-not-too-sweet (deceivingly so, though, once you realize how much sugar is actually in this thing). It personifies—to us, at least—Thanksgiving, birthdays, coziness and the tastes and smells of the season.

I could even make the case that it’s perfect for breakfast, assuming you want to start the day off with a sugar/booze high, and the more I think about it, the more I think that could be something to be very thankful for indeed.

Sherry-Glazed Apple Cake

For the cake:
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 ½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
3 cups peeled, chopped apples
2 cups chopped pecans
2 tsp vanilla

For the glaze:
1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup dry sherry

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 325°.
2. Cream butter and 2 cups of sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well.
3. Sift together flour, soda and salt; add and mix in cinnamon and nutmeg.
4. Add dry ingredients to butter/sugar/egg mixture and mix well.
5. Stir in apples, nuts and vanilla.
6. Pour into a greased bundt or tube pan, and bake about 1½ hours or until done. Let stand 15 minutes, then turn out.
7. Mix glaze ingredients in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir constantly until syrupy. Pour over warm cake.

For the rest of us…

When I was a senior in high school, I was required to take a computer programming class. I’m probably dating myself by telling you we were learning the Fortran language.

Well, “we” might be overstating it. Some people in my class were definitely learning it. I wasn’t one of them.

Computer programming (and by extension, all things computer related) was just one of those things that didn’t connect up in my brain. And this wasn’t like Chemistry class the year before, when during the last two weeks of class, it suddenly hit me in a flash of comperehension. As Mrs. Hamilton droned on in the front of the room, I was staring blankly ahead, wondering why on earth she had decided on that hair cut, when just like that: It all made sense. The Periodic Table, the formulas, all of it. The proverbial lightbulb illuminating above my head.

There would be no blinding flash of the not-so-obvious for me in computer class. I only passed by the skin of my teeth and through the kindness (or exasperation—there was a lot of begging and pleading) of our teacher.

After graduation I headed to college with my Smith-Corona typewriter and never looked back. I did have a roommate who owned a fancy Brother typewriter that made me think computers might not be such a bad thing. It wasn’t officially a computer in any form that I’d ever seen (no strange lines of code required), but it stored what you typed and then waited as you fed paper into the roller, shooting out your beautifully typed pages one at a time. That was cool.

But it did nothing to really persuade me that computers would be in any way a part of my life. So when my California-born Econ professor, who was something of a mentor to me, kept trying to convince me to apply for a job at Apple Computers when I graduated (“It’s such a cool place to work! It’s on the cutting edge of everything! And Cupertino’s so beautiful!”), well, once again, I just didn’t get it. I knew what Apple was. Sort of. To me it was an enigmatic company with plenty of bravado, daring commercials and creations that were revolutionizing…uh, something. But in 1989, I wasn’t sure exactly what.

My professor wrote letters of recommendations for me to use when I applied for that job at Apple. If I look long and hard enough, I’ll probably find them in an old box somewhere in a closet.

About a year into my first job out of college, doing grunt-work in the Campaign Department at United Way, I befriended my counterpart in the Marketing Department. She showed me something magical. She was creating these documents with graphics and columns and all different kinds of fonts—these publications—and she was doing it on a computer that looked like no other computer I’d ever seen. The Macintosh.

I was a goner.

I learned to use the mouse. And then I learned to draw pictures. I learned to put words in beautiful type and make it look like the newspaper, or a book, or a brochure. It printed out just like it looked on the screen!

I never needed to type in one single line of code. I highlighted and double-clicked. I learned to organize my files by dragging them onto pictures of folders. Or get rid of them by dragging them over to the trash can!

I learned it all in about three days.

And I never looked back. My career moved in directions I’d never anticipated and never could have planned. And it was because of a computer, of all things. A computer for the rest of us.

#thankyouSteve

Take THAT, Fashion Expert

“Fashion alchemist” Frida Giannini supplied her top 10 Things Every Woman Should Have for a recent column in Allure Magazine, and it made me realize that contrary to what you might think by looking at the above photo of my office desk, I am sorely lacking in the “things” department.

What does Frida have that I don’t? Well, there are the $1,800 riding boots. (Like you, Frida is reminded of her childhood riding lessons when she smells the leather of those boots.) The $30 lip gloss that has “no color.” The tube of sunscreen that will set you back $155. The $4,500 python-and-bamboo bag.

All the essentials.

But consider:

Number 1 on Frida’s list is a vintage David Webb ring. (For the record, Frida tells us she actually owns two, both from the late ’60s.) I, on the other hand, happen to own not one but approximately 35 earrings from the past 20 years that are missing a mate. That’s right, individual earrings of gold-plate, “precious” stones and silver-like materials dating back as far as 1990. And not a one of them is of any use or in any way stylish. Now if that’s not “things,” I don’t know what is.

Number 2: Levi’s, Wrangler and Lee jeans from the ’70s. I would absolutely still have leftover jeans from the ’70s if my mother hadn’t constantly been making me clean my closet. She likes to remind me of my habit of stashing away my Halloween candy in my closet, apparently with plans to savor it slowly throughout the year. Every year while I was at summer camp, she’d find the bag of stale, sad old Smarties and Tootsie Rolls and throw it away.

I don’t live with my mother any more, though, so that means there are all kinds of old (vintage!) clothes clogging up my closet. If big blazers with dusty shoulders from the early ’90s come back in style, I’m in business.

Number 5 on the list is a perfect manicure. Frida gets her nails done once a week, she tells us, because it’s “one of the first things I notice about a person.”

One of the first things I notice about a person is whether or not they have a made-up nonsensical profession like “fashion alchemist” or “social media expert.” And yet I call myself the “Chief Word Nerd” at my company, so I really have no room to talk.

What does this have to do with manicures? Nothing. A perfect manicure is one of those things I only seem to have for about 5 hours every 6 months. I can get the manicure; I just can’t seem to hold onto it. And as any Seinfeld fan knows, it’s the holding that’s the most important part. Point to Frida.

A Gucci felt hat with feathers lands at number 10 on the list. (I’m not kidding.) You may be surprised to learn that I don’t have a Gucci felt hat with feathers. However, I will always have the fantastic story of how we spent hours convincing the decorator we hired (and later fired for obvious reasons) when we moved to Nashville that a bed made of felt would be impractical, particularly considering we have a cat.

I may not have a be-feathered felt hat, but that’s one thing they can never take away from me and that, let’s face it, we can never have enough of: true tales of the ridiculous.

5 From the Bookshelf: On Language, Writing and Lifelong Learning

That's me, in Iceland. I swear this has a connection to the story.

Back in the dark ages when I was an undergrad student at Tulane, the English major was divided into two separate tracks: “Literature” and “Language, Writing and Rhetoric,” or LWR.

Those of us in the LWR track were fighting a losing battle against its gradual and eventual phasing out, which meant during registration each semester you could always spot a few LWR majors frantically pacing from table to table, looking for something – anything – to sign up for that would count towards our requirements.

There was some upside. I may have missed the opportunity to take Medieval English as a foreign language my senior year, but I ended up instead in a Medieval Literature seminar focused on early Icelandic sagas. A surprisingly entertaining class taught by a professor with a passion for all things Icelandic, it’s something I never would have considered taking if it hadn’t been essentially the last English class left with an open slot. And had I not taken it, I probably wouldn’t have been so motivated to take a trip to Iceland a few years ago.

But all those “history of the language” classes? I never did get them. That’s probably why I find myself picking up all kinds of language and writing books now – some easy-to-read and fun, others a little technical and dense (and I’m not even going to mention the various squads of The Atlantic’s Word Police Academy I’ve been inducted into).

More than just a hobby, though, these kinds of books can come in handy when you’re faced with a blank page or trying to decide if it should be “toward” or “towards,” so I thought I’d share some of my favorites with you. Whether you’re a recovering LWR major, want some context to make it easier to understand the quirky rules of English grammar and usage, or just have an unhealthy obsession with the language like I do, here’s my summer reading list for the classes I never took.

Adjusting Your Sails: What Elizabeth Edwards Taught Me

“I do know that when [my children are] older and telling their own children about their grandmother, they will be able to say that she stood in the storm…and when the wind did not blow her way – and it surely has not – she adjusted her sails.”

– Elizabeth Edwards

Simple. Bold.

Two words, two prompts from Mama Kat’s Writing Workshop this week, and I can’t settle on just one because I think they both apply to this quote from Elizabeth Edwards.

Like so many others, I felt great sadness at the news of her death this week, even though I didn’t know her personally. Although we all knew she had incurable breast cancer, there was something about her – her strength, her resolve and, yes, her resilience in the face of unthinkable circumstances – that made her seem almost invincible. If anyone could outrun invasive cancer, surely she could.

When I saw that quote, I realized it was a great representation of how she lived her life, and also a reason why she has been such an inspiration and role model for me and countless others.

It may seem an odd choice of a quote for me in some ways. I’ll most likely never be a mother. Those were the cards I was dealt. It really wasn’t even something that was a big concern to me until the choice was taken away.

It’s certainly not on the level of losing your 16-year-old son or being diagnosed with incurable cancer or being betrayed by your husband and then dragged through the ensuing media circus his actions created.

But those of us in my situation know that it, too, represents a break, an ending, a separation from what you thought would be and suddenly isn’t. It forces you to change direction whether you want to or not. Your life is no longer going to head in the way you’d always assumed it would, and that’s that.

There’s no turning back. There’s no changing it.

You can drown in it – and some days I do – or you can adjust your sails. It’s a simple idea but bold at the same time.

Simple, but not obvious. It’s one of those “easier said than done” concepts, and that’s why it’s bold, too. It takes guts to refuse to let it consume you. And that’s what Elizabeth Edwards embodied.

She could have wallowed in her tragedies. Certainly if anyone had a right to feel sorry for themselves, she did.

But that wasn’t her. She decided that, even though she wasn’t dealt the hand she expected or wanted, she would adjust her strategy and play to the fullest.

It’s a lesson I try to take in. Remember.

We all face storms. Some are literally life changing, some are momentary blips. But a simple, bold decision to adjust the sails and even ride the waves to a new destination can mean a life well lived, whether it unfolds the way you planned or not.

I’m working on it.

Top 3 Moments of Panic from Thanksgivings Past (Part 3)

Three days after Thanksgiving, and they’re still here.

I know they’re lurking behind that unassuming door. As soon as I open it, that stark light will switch on and I’ll see them, staring back at me, taunting me.

Thanksgiving leftovers.

Now, if you’ve been following this series, you know that I once made mashed potatoes for two people using a recipe that called for seven pounds of potatoes. We’ve also established that math is not my strong suit. So it’s not surprising that I manage to end up with a few leftovers. But still…

No matter how much I make or how many guests we have over, I still seem to end up with a LOT of leftovers.

Atomic leftovers.

Leftovers that seem to know how to reproduce on their own so that even though I force takeout containers on all the guests, and despite Gibson the dog’s best efforts at hunting down every last morsel he can find, the leftovers just grow and grow until, by Sunday, we clearly have twice the amount of potatoes we started with on Thursday.

The image quality is crappy, but the moment had to be preserved. I don't know where Gibson learned to behave like this.

I’ve decided that there needs to be a leftovers version of the Kubler-Ross model, the Five Stages of Grief. Let’s call it the Casser-Role Model.

Thanksgiving Panics – Bonus Post

Why didn’t someone tell me about this sooner? A “Cook from Frozen” Whole Turkey?!

One of the greatest inventions of our time?

Yes, it’s turkey for the math- and refrigerator-space-challenged! (Thanks to Nadia G from the Bitchin’ Kitchen for this great find.)

I don’t know if you can get them in the US, but if not, it just may be worth the move to Canada.

On the other hand, I guess it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without all the panic.

Top 3 Moments of Panic from Thanksgivings Past (Part 2)

Are mashed potatoes really that difficult to make?

I admit I’d never actually attempted to make them from scratch until a few Thanksgivings ago, but it seems like there’s a lot of advice and troubleshooting for successfully producing the perfect mashed potato.

But all the recipes are pretty straightforward: Boil ‘em. Mash ‘em with some stuff. The end.

How hard can that be?

Turns out, it’s not difficult, and I still don’t know why there’s so much literature on the subject. Especially when the one key piece of information that really matters is missing from all that literature.

Potato peel is the enemy.

As I said, I really had no trouble with the recipe (Mashed Sour Cream and Scallion Potatoes, by the way). OK, it is true that math tripped me up again. I should have realized that I didn’t need 8 servings of mashed potatoes for 2 people, and even if I hadn’t looked at the number of servings, the “7 pounds of potatoes” in the recipe’s ingredients should have at least been a red flag, but that’s another story.

No, this story is about the hidden danger that’s lurking in every mashed potato preparation: the propensity for peel-tastrophe.

I was feeling right on track with my Thanksgiving prep. The bird was in the oven and, fingers crossed, not stewing in a cornucopia of deadly bacteria. The game plan for the side dishes was on schedule, the desserts were made, and the potatoes, stripped of their jackets, were skinny-dipping away in a giant pot of boiling water.

Seemed like a good time to do a little cleaning up. So I shoved the mounds of potato peel down the sink drain and turned on the water. I flipped the switch to turn on the disposal. And then…

Top 3 Moments of Panic from Thanksgivings Past (Part 1)

Will the turkey thaw out in time? Or will we have to postpone Thanksgiving until Saturday?

The thing about a frozen turkey is, you have to be able to find a spot in the freezer for it, which can be a challenge depending on how big of a bird you end up with. (For us, this is actually a blessing in disguise since it forces us to finally part with unrecognizable leftovers from last January.)

But the other thing about a frozen turkey is, you have to thaw it out, and here you tread a delicate line between a solid-as-a-rock, still-frozen state and horrible bacterial-induced death.

There also seems to be some math involved, which is always a bad sign, but if you follow the calculations precisely, by Thursday morning you should end up with what I ended up with two years ago: a still not-quite-thawed-out turkey.

My first solution was to panic. Once I had completed that task, my husband decided to run to the neighborhood grocery store and pick us up a fresh turkey.

Now, this may sound practical to you, or it may sound extravagant. But if you’ve ever been to the sad grocery store in my neighborhood, where you’re guaranteed to find lottery tickets and cheez foods but would be hard-pressed to find chicken breasts, the idea that he would successfully find a fresh, not-past-its-sell-by-date turkey, on Thanksgiving Day no less, was just plain ridiculous.

But somehow he did.

Within minutes, he was back home with a fresh turkey.

In the meantime, though, I’d come up with an even better solution: I called my mother.

She talked me down with some quick thawing tips and assurances that it wasn’t still as frozen as I might have believed and also that her quick thawing methods would likely not kill me considering they’d never done me in in all my years of eating Thanksgiving at home (with the exception, of course, of the year my parents opted for a Tofurky. Just the idea of the Tofurky almost killed me.).

Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, I sent my husband back to the store to return his new turkey. It was a good thing he didn’t have to go far, because he would need to be there for the next crisis that was about to strike…

Stay tuned for Part 2, “Potato Peel of Doom.”

In the meantime, I’m already panicking about being behind in this year’s preparations. For example, I’m past the deadline to make my leaf decorations and cornucopia.