$24.62

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 1:23 pm (Writing by Ear)
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Mike and I have been meaning to renew our passports for at least three years now. Because you never know when we might just need to hop on a cruise or jet off on an Italian holiday or satisfy my hankerin’ for French Roast — in France. We’re so spontaneous like that.

For the past year and a half, we’ve even had the applications filled out, sitting in a folder, along with the pictures we had gotten at Kinko’s, our old passports, and my birth certificate. My passport had long expired, so I needed to start from scratch. Mike is just under the window for getting a renewal rather than starting over, which can be done by mail rather than in person.

I found out last week that instead of going to the post office to do the paperwork, I could go to the courthouse, which was easier because, unlike the local post office, no appointment was required. So yesterday I gathered my folder and the checkbook and set off. After a bit of confusion and a wrong trip to the Deeds office (nowhere on the directory was there a listing for passports, and the guy in the Deeds office was nice enough to look it up for me and determine I needed to go down the hall to the Prothonotary), I was in the right place talking to someone who could process my application.

Started off great.

“Do you need the application?”

No, here it is, all filled out.

“Do you need a picture?”

No I have one (two in fact).

“My, you’re all prepared!”

I beamed proudly.

“Do you have your birth certificate?”

Sure! I handed it over.

“Don’t you have the long form birth certificate with your parents’ names on it?”

(Stunned) No? Do I need that? I don’t think I even have one of those!

“Yes, I can’t use this (perfectly legit, original, state-issued birth certificate).”

(In desperation) Even if I have my old passport?????

“Oh, if you have your old passport, that’s OK.”

Thank you, Jesus.

“OK, let me make a copy of your driver’s license.”

Here. No problem.

“Oh. Wait. You need to fill out this newer application instead. See, your form is dated ’05 on the bottom? There’s a 2010 one you have to use.”

So much for having a neat, typed-on-the-computer-in-the-handy-fill-in-form version.

I trudged off to fill out the new form. Which, by the way, had EXACTLY the same information on it as the form I had already filled out.

“All set? That’ll be $110 made out to U.S. Department of State.”

“Now, I’ll give you the oath. Raise your right hand.”

I swore that yes, the information on the form is correct and that’s me in the picture.

“That’s it, except for our $25 service fee.”

Hmmm, didn’t know about that. I pulled out my checkbook again.

“We don’t take checks.”

Sinking heart. Rush of sweat. There was no way in hell I had $25 in my wallet.

I checked. A ten. A five. And 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 ones. $24.

I glance in the change compartment. Nope, no quarters. Not enough.

“Oh, I only have $24 and some change.”

They looked at me blankly. One woman said, “There’s an ATM in the lobby. They’ll charge you though.”

“I guess I have to go back to my car. I have some money in the car.”

More blank looks.

So back in the elevator I go. Down to the lobby. Four or five blocks back down the hill to my car. Yep, as I knew, I had two ones in my cupholder.

Four or five blocks back up the hill. Through the metal detector (again). Up the elevator to the fifth floor.

A ten. A five. And 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, TEN ones.

She gave me my receipt and I left.

So, a happy ending. A long-put-off task finally done. But it got me thinking. What would I have done in that situation? If I had been on the other side of the counter when I walked in, so prepared, doing everything I was asked, and coming up $1 short on the cash?

Would I have offered a dollar? Or as it turned out when I counted my change, 38 cents?

To be fair, I didn’t ask anyone to help me out. I never would do that — not in my nature.

But I like to think I would have offered the dollar anyway. Made a small gesture to help someone out (and make their day, really).

But, I can’t be sure. I hope I have the opportunity to prove it sometime when someone, a stranger, needs some change for the meter or their grocery order or something else trivial.

Because I really do think “pay it forward” should work even when you weren’t paid in the first place. Gotta start somewhere.

Lesson learned.

Each day, learn something new,
and just as important, relearn something old.
~ Robert Brault

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This, that, and the other thing

Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 12:07 pm (Writing by Ear)
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This: I was just outside with Mike, trying to see if we could put the cover back on the deck furniture. Our elaborate piling, draping, and tying had lasted pretty well for a couple months, but a windstorm last week exposed everything. We found the blown-off cover still iced fast to the deck, so on the way back into the house, Mike said, “Did you cut the tops off this hydrangea?” (Darn, he caught me.) Of course, the work of a deer. I’m bummed because we planted a couple oakleaf hydrangeas a couple years ago with the hopes of them growing tall and beautiful and overflowing with blossoms, like the ones in our friends’ garden that we so admire. Last year I think we got one blossom; looks like this year will be the same. Stupid deer — go eat the junky neighbor’s stuff, would ya?

That: We stopped at McD’s yesterday morning to use our 2-for-1 breakfast sandwich coupon. I got my coffee and was waiting for the young girl (teens-20, maybe a college student) to move away from the cream & sugar spot on the counter so I could move in. I watched in disbelief and fascination as she proceeded to load her coffee (a medium, at most) with no less than 10 (TEN) sugar packets and 4 (FOUR) creamers. My eyes got wider and wider as she methodically ripped and dumped packet after packet and the pile on the little corner of counter got bigger and bigger. She must be playing a joke on someone, I thought. “Here, so-and-so, I got you some coffee….ha ha.”  But no, she was just calmly ripping and dumping, as if she’d done this many times. I nudged Mike, to make sure he was observing this, too. After a while, she finally stopped, put the lid on her coffee, and left the restaurant. I tried to imagine what it would be like to drink such a concoction. Hot sugar water with a little coffee extract in it? I imagined her day…hamster on a wheel, talking a mile a minute like one of the Chipettes. The image stayed with me a long time…clearly my mind doesn’t have enough important stuff to think about.

The other thing: Why is it that Mike and I feel guilty for spending a weekend at leisure? We both work hard all week, and when the weekend comes, we feel we should be doing more, and more, and more. Especially with house projects (the endless sunroom and now, our basement stairs and lower “landing,” for lack of a better term). Yesterday was a lazy, mostly unproductive Saturday, and now, today, we’re lounging with our laptops, coffee, and day-old donuts, listening to the Roots and Rhythm Mix on YEP, and dreading the thoughts of getting up and doing something. What’s the adage…we’ll rest when we’re dead? Sometimes it feels like that, and I know I work way less and lead a way less busy life than most other people I know.

But, I better go and figure out how to spend the day productively…taxes to do, bills to pay, wood to sand, and far too many things to clean, straighten, organize, empty, throw away, or otherwise attend to. You know: this, that, and the other thing. Always another other thing.

That destructive siren, sloth, is ever to be avoided.
~ Horace 

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Zhumping on zee — ow you say? — “bandwagon”

Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 12:10 am (Writing by Ear)
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Let me just say up front that the irony of this post on the heels of my last post is not lost on me.

Last post: lamenting my inability to lose weight. This post: espousing on the agony and ecstacy that is the macaron. A cookie — and so much more.

I was largely uninitiated in the macaron mystique until my niece became a macaronaholic before Christmas, making dozens and dozens and dozens and DOZENS in an attempt to achieve perfection. Based on the ones she shared with us at Christmas — a glorious assortment of lemon, lime, cherry, and vanilla, each a picture-perfect wonder — she achieved it.

Before that, I had read a bit about the surge in popularity of these pretty little sandwich cookies, but I didn’t understand. I was confusing them with macaroons — those dense, chewy, coconut cookies. Macarons (a French creation) are completely different. Not coconut — almondy, meringuey, chewy — yet light. Yet luscious, usually filled with something wonderful like buttercream frosting. Hard to describe. Easy to love. Gluten-free, so there’s that too.

Also, a little hard to Google, because if you try to search for “French macarons,” Google helpfully switches it to “French macaroons” — at least until it learns better.

Anyway, once I knew about my niece’s obsession, I started doing a little research online and found that macarons have been all the rage for quite some time. Bloggers galore have posted about their attempts, and pastry chefs everywhere have shared their tricks. Me, I just fell in love with the taste and have been wanting to try my hand, despite reading how difficult they are and how any of a dozen little foibles (too much humidity, over-mixing, under-mixing, mixing too fast, mixing too slow, cold eggs, warm eggs, old eggs, new eggs, on and on) can thwart even experienced bakers.

Clearly this macaron obsession is a powerful thing.

For my first attempt, I relied on the method and tips at BraveTart.com — truly a great resource. Howevah, and it’s a big howevah, I wasn’t ready to buy all the tools recommended…e.g, a food scale ($25 on Amazon) to weigh the ingredents rather than relying on the amateur’s way (measuring cups), or a pastry bag and tips for piping out the cookie batter (reverently called “the macaronage”). So, I improvised.

I’m not sure why we have this postal scale that used to be at Mike’s office, but we do. So I used it. I have no idea if it’s accurate, but I figured if I used it to weigh out all the ingredients, at least proportionally everything would be in sync with the recipe.

Also, a pastry bag and tips is not a big investment, but again, I already had this.

Almond flour is a key ingredient, and while I’ve  tried twice now to buy ready-made (Bob’s Red Mill), Wal-Mart has been totally out for well over a week (way to manage inventory, world’s largest retailer). So I made my own by grinding almonds in my food processor — a totally normal thing that many bakers do. Blanched almonds (without any of the brown skin) yield the prettiest result, but blanched, slivered almonds cost a little more than the unblanched, sliced, so I opted for the sliced.

Also, all the recipes call for using a stand mixer with a whip attachment to beat the egg whites into meringue. I just have regular beaters on my mixer, and while I’ve made meringue with no problem, I opted to use my immersion (hand) blender that has a whip instead. It took virtually the same amount of time the recipe called for (like 9 minutes of beating — quite a lot), so I don’t think that was an issue.

Mixing the almond flour-powdered sugar mixture with the meringue to create the macaronage is a crucial step. I think I did OK — at least I think it approximated the description in BraveTart’s recipe. Loading this into my handy Pampered Chef decorator was a bitch — I’ll be springing for a pastry bag. And while it wasn’t easy to pipe out the little rounds of batter, I was happy the batter seemed to be the right consistency and spread and flatten as it was supposed to.

After following BraveTart’s suggestions for whacking the cookie trays on the counter a few times to get any air bubbles out, I was hopeful when I finally got them in the oven. My oven can be set to convection or regular — I chose regular after reading that the fan on the convection can cause the macarons to crack.

I thought I saw the start of “feet” — key to a great macaron. Feet is the name given to a thin layer of airy, sponge-looking cookie that the smooth top rests on. (See the beautiful feet on BraveTart’s photos).

But, alas, feet were not forthcoming.

That thin, airy layer you can see on a few of them should be at least double that size. No cracked ones on this tray, at least. The other tray, below it in the oven, didn’t fare so well. Clearly a product of some oven discrepancy — I’ll have to experiment with that on future batches. I tried the convection setting on the second batch of trays, but cracking was more of a problem. BraveTart recommends adjusting the oven racks to avoid them getting blown on by the fan, so maybe I’ll try that, too. The idea of a convection oven is supposed to be super-even baking, so it seems like it should be ideal for macarons. But so far, not so much.

Also, I experimented with using my silicone baking sheet liners on the first batch and parchment paper on the second. Parchment worked better with less sticking.

In the end, my first-ever macarons turned out flatter than they should have been, and many had cracks. Many were hollow underneath — which I think means they were underbaked. I didn’t achieve perfect, same-size circles — some were downright oval. They were a little tan on top, instead of soft, creamy ecru all over. They had flecks from the almond skin.

So, by now you might be thinking I threw the whole, pitiful batch away.

But here’s the beauty part: Macarons are scrumptious even without feet. Even with cracks and speckles and a suntan. Even without perfectly matched tops and bottoms.

Even more beauty: They get better over time! Store them in the fridge (for up to a week) and they’ll mature into even greater lusciousness.

I soldiered on.

Instead of the classic buttercream filling usually called for, I used a different chocolate frosting recipe from the can of cocoa — one that didn’t require a mixer. Seriously, considering the state of my kitchen, and that I’d been at this for almost two hours and it was now dinnertime, I wasn’t willing to dirty another appliance. (And this shot was after I put the food processor away.)

Soooo, after all that, with my first macaron effort — and a few of the tasty results — happily under my belt, I’m still hooked. I’ll try again, tweak a few things, and strive for prettier, more classic cookies. I’ll try other flavors and colors. I’ll go for the real buttercream and experiment with some other fillings, too. But I’m sure not complaining…except maybe about those 5 lbs. I can’t seem to lose.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
~ Samuel Beckett 

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