Tuesday, October 21, 2008
this just in!
so this is rather out of my usual way of doing things here but I feel compelled to share the following incident:
I just got to work and I’m on my way down the hall to get a cup of coffee. An IT dude enters the hallway ahead of me. I tweak my collar out of my jacket lapel. The IT guy brightens up and says, “Now you’re en plein air!” I choose to interpret this as a good sign, ambiguous though it may actually be. Anticipation shapes eventuality, I always say, as of now.
And since I’m here, Joanna, yeah, the candied pumpkin worked pretty well. Slice up the pumpkin, cut slices into two-three inch chunks, clean those of pulp and skin, soak overnight in lime water (1 T/qt); rinse very well and then place in warm water to boil for five minutes; remove, cool and drain three hours; pierce (gently!) with a fork and cook with “equal weight of sugar” = covered in sugar at 300 for three hours. I tossed in some cinnamon but I dont think it really dispersed evenly and frankly it wasn’t very good cinnamon but the candy came out like turkish delight. I diced up a bunch and spooned it into bird’s custard as a topping/dessert cream at the sukkah party and people were ladling it over apple pie with breathless abandon; the crystalized pumpkin fibers wove all through the custard and the nuggets of glutinous candy stuck in your teeth so you could keep tasting them furtively till you gave in and spooned up more. Hard to stop eating.
And now to work.
