saturday june 7 2003 | 9:30 a.m.
it is the best possible miami saturday morning. it's still early, and i woke up minutes ago to rain. i'm alone: brad is at work, the roommates are still asleep. i just made café con leche in my alton & 17th street cuban market-bought cafetera, the metal kind that screws together and brews espresso on the stove, which generally you find only at hardware stores. i made banana and blueberry bread yesterday, and i'm having it for breakfast now. i can't believe that i made something this good with my own hands. the bread is the result of a recipe i altered to fit my taste and the contents of my fridge/"pantry" (ie, the top of my closet), so i'm very proud of it, and of course i'm including the recipe at the end of this entry.
cooking is quickly becoming one of my favorite pastimes. brad doesn't like cooking and i don't like doing dishes, so more often than not i cook dinner and he cleans up after me, which suits me just fine. i am the queen of the sofrito (an onion and tomato base, or sauce, that you cook together in a frying pan), which seems to have been passed matrilineally down through the generations. my grandmother sustains that el sofrito is the most important element of good cooking, and i submit that as evidence. we have a whole series of variations on that theme, with chicken and turkey and vegetables and herbs and spices and the requisite carb to accompany (different pastas, potato, couscous, brown rice, homemade bread from the bread man at the sunday morning lincoln road market). this is my art-n-craft stress release. brad designs buildings, i play with food (not for a living, though).
this past week at work felt like a caribbean vacation (at least within the parameters of the government office confinement) because my nemesis was, herself, off on vacation. so everybody was in an especially good mood, and i was surprised to hear daily shit-talking about this person from everybody: referees, deputy clerks, and naturally the interpreters, who have agreed amongst ourselves to call her danny devito in private due to a striking resemblance. even my supervisor is getting into it! this probably comes off sounding horrible and gratuitous, but believe me, if you only knew...
so i don't think i've ever talked about this, but i work with a bunch of jehovah's witnesses. all the interpreters except for one, who is himself a baptist minister, are witnesses. this means that we have little black leather-bound bibles and propaganda around the office, and that i have to watch my language -- frustrated exclamations like "jesus!" get raised eyebrows at least -- and that every now and then i have to bite my tongue. it can be interesting, and it can be terribly exasperating, because although they allow plenty of room for explanation, they do not tolerate being challenged, and so it's hard for me to resist shaking things up a little. at least i've gotten j_____ watching south park and imitating cartman now. it's the little things.
ø my favorite bands right now are the yeah yeah yeahs and the blood group. fucking genius.
ø my favorite comic books are paradigm and the authority (because hawksmoor is so damn cool).
ø i am about a dozen pages away from finishing the edge of paradise: america in micronesia, by p. f. kluge, which has made me terribly nostalgic for kenyon without even being about the place. one of these days i will write professor k. a letter.
ø i haven't talked to some of my closest friends since the day i graduated college, about two years and a month ago.
♦ ♦ ♦
banana + blueberry bread
• 8 tbsp (about 1 stick) butter, softened
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 3 ripe bananas
• 1 cup blueberries (or substitute for 3/4 cup pecans, coarsely chopped)
• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (or substitute for 1/2 tsp ground apple pie spice)
1. preheat oven to 350°F. grease a (roughly) 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pan. cream the butter and brown sugar in large mixing bowl until mixture is light and fluffy. gradually add eggs, well-beaten, until well combined. add vanilla extract.
2. peel and mash bananas with a fork. add to the mixture. beat until well combined.
3. fold flour into mixture. add blueberries. spoon mixture into baking pan & bake for about an hour or until fork inserted into middle of bread comes out clean. allow 10 min to cool. serve.
