Art tasting

The end of the semester means service projects come to fruition in Honors classes. I've been kept hopping by documentary filmmakers and student researchers all swirling around the topic of public art. My freshman class used a mural painted by a student as a thesis project in their residence hall as a jumping-off point for a public education campaign and opinion polling about campus art in general.



We gathered the night before the event for all the prep. An essential element to any campus event, I've discovered, is the banner -- projected onto a bedsheet to trace the outline, then painted on by enthusiastic student artists.




Our concept was to exchange homebaked treats for responses to a quick 1-minute survey. The idea came about when my initial questionnaire of class skills revealed that eight of fourteen class members were bakers.




Even the best ideas need a helping hand. A class member's mom contributed these unsolicited and totally awesome cakepops in our theme colors.




Theme, you ask? Yes indeed. I don't consider a project really graspable or executable until we have a name that provides the core idea and the driving force. A student came up with SweetARTS, and two others designed this incredible logo, playing off the iconic SweeTarts brand.




We passed out specially-designed informational flyers with surveys attached at various locations on campus associated with public art -- the university's art gallery, the sports complex that houses mascot statuary, the library whose walls are lined with donated collections, near prominent outdoor sculptures -- and asked recipients to come to Alumni Circle, the campus's historic heart and the site of a much-ballyhooed but unfortunately abandoned public art installation a few years ago, to submit them.




The surveys (approved by our institutional review board) used pictures to assess the respondent's familiarity with outdoor sculpture on campus, and asked a few questions about the value and priority the respondent would place on campus art collections.




We were hoping to collect 100 surveys during the three hours of our public event. Community members stuffed this box with 316.




Respondents also were invited to paint or leave handprints on a temporary art wall at the Alumni Circle site.




It seems strangely appropriate that two random passersby snuck into our group photo. After all, our project was all about getting people walking through campus thinking about the art around them, and amplifying their voices. Kudos to the SweetARTS team for an amazing project!

You can follow the project results by liking our SweetARTS page on Facebook. There we'll share the full project report, including the research students did into public art and campus examples, and the results from our SweetARTS mini-survey, as well as a focus group and survey on the large mural installed as a student thesis project in the Honors residence hall last year and on opinions about the place of art within the Honors living-learning community.

She defines the possibilities

Today was a highly productive New Year's Eve.



I ran a 5K.



Noel made amazing barbecue ribs on the new smoker.



And I sewed my first pair of curtains.

Full story of the last at Toxophily.

Japan: The Food

I tried to remember to take a picture of every meal I ate in Japan.  Skipped a bunch of breakfasts since they were similar, and most of the snacks too, but here's a sampling.


Minced tuna roll, prawn and avocado spring rolls.


Pork noodle bowl at the Sophia University cafeteria.


Fish roe, octopus, jellyfish.


Cuttlefish with egg sauce.


Assorted sushi.


Champagne mouse and mussel soup.


Sushi lunch purchased on street outside of university, a bit the worse for being carried around.


Sweet and sour chicken and egg drop soup at a Chinese place.


Seafood salad, tofu two ways, duck, fugu at the onsen.


Salmon sushi and tuna roll at Narita airport sushi bar.

Madeleine

We had lunch at Panera Bread today.  Since it's Saturday -- an S day -- I got to contemplate choosing a dessert from their bakery section.

Usually in this situation I would find the chocolatey-est thing on the shelf.  I have only a few sweet opportunities a week; I try not to waste them on anything non-chocolate.

But last time I took the kids to Panera Bread, Cady Gray picked out a thick, flower-shaped sugar cookie with bright yellow and pink sprinkles.  It looked so cheery that I decided to try it today, much to Noel's surprise.  I tucked it in my purse and brought it home; an hour or so later, I unwrapped it, broke off a piece, and popped it in my mouth.

Perhaps you've had this particular cookie.  A quick Google search finds people in search of the recipe.  All I can say is that it was something far greater than what I was expecting.  Thick, buttery, not just sugary but also with the underlying rustic richness of shortbread, accented with the sharp, sweet hit of the sprinkles coated on the top.

I involuntarily exclaimed at its goodness, earning a longsuffering look from Noel (whose low-carb diet would recoil in horror from such a confection).  It was an instant trip back in time, both to the thick homemade sugar cookies we helped bake for holidays, and to the shortbread biscuits that my Scottish grandmother always gave us when we visited her, dispensed from a tartan-covered package.

 It's been a long time since I was brought up so short by a morsel of food.  I felt like I had taken a bite of summer itself.  A reminder of the power of taste, and a call to expand my dessert horizons every so often.

Planning a feast

It's the weekend before Thanksgiving, and that means it's time to decide what we're making for the big dinner on the big day.  My parents are going to be visiting for the occasion, which thrills their grandchildren to no end.  It makes me think of all the Thanksgiving dinners I enjoyed at home over the years.  When I was a teenager, that meant my mom taking dishes down the driveway to my grandparents' house, where my favorite parts of the meal were waiting: Nana's stuffing (casserole style, cooked in the oven) and her yellow layer cake with thick caramel icing made on the stovetop and spread quickly before it hardens.

I know people who are fanatical about making every component of the Thanksgiving meal themselves, right down to the cornbread used in the stuffing and the scratch yeast rolls.  Call me a child of convenience foods, but brown-and-serve rolls (or even better, Sister Schubert's) are about my favorite bread of all time.  We've got a number of prepared items that will be on our table -- apple pie made by local bakers, to be sure, but also cranberry sauce and gravy straight from the factory.

Last year's feast was one of the best we've ever had, and we're going to pretty much duplicate it on Thursday for the other set of grandparents.  I love eating, and I've always loved Thanksgiving just for the food.  But the longer the live, the more you have to be thankful for, and the more you appreciate the side of the day that your parents tried so hard to teach you about when you were a kid.

Picnic

It was a day of two picnics for Archer. His class went to Toad Suck Park all day. Then his school had a cookout this evening for students and their families. I told Cady Gray that her brother ate two out of his three meals outdoors.

Personally, I've never fully understood the appeal of picnics. My image of them primarily comes from memories of going to Fourth of July pops concerts in Chickamauga Park, hauling coolers and blankets to whatever tiny patch of open ground we could find on the crowded hill, and listening to the 1812 Overture under the stars with cannon firing on the other side of the tower. The food was never the starring attraction; it was really good (my mom's potato salad with the slices of hardboiled egg on top particularly), but I always thought it would be just as good indoors and I'd worry a lot less about wind, rain, bugs, and dropping my plate.

Now that I'm all grown up and no longer under the roof of teetotalers, I understand picnics a little better. A glass of wine as the sun goes down and the breezes blow certainly has its attractions. But I see a clear distinction between eating outdoors and drinking outdoors. Is there any food that is enhanced by an alfresco setting, the way a nice flowery white is? Isn't it, I posit to you, beverages that we really want to consume out on the open, rather than entire meals? Is there any liquid comestible that fresh air does not improve, from tea to pale ale?

Perhaps your picnic experiences are more food-centric than mine. If so, I'd love to hear counterarguments to my bold assertions about open-air drinking!

Bedeviled

Easter has come and gone. There are twenty-odd colored and hardboiled eggs in the refrigerator. And that means it is my favorite eating season of the year: deviled egg time.

What is it about a deviled egg? The way the yolk mingles with the indulgent fats and oils of the mayonnaise and the spiciness of the mustard, making a creamy, piquant filling. The way that flavor and texture is supported and balanced by the neutral, firm egg white cup.

I've infected my children with my deviled egg love. After I made the treats, Cady Gray called me back to the bedroom to witness some achievement she'd unlocked on her computer game. Archer came bouncing in a few minutes later. "Deviled eggs toniiight!" he said, with a celebratory quaver in his voice.

Deviled eggs are a warm weather food, for picnics and dinners with the windows open. We could have them all year round -- eggs and boiling water are always available. But isn't it wonderful to look forward to them as a spring specialty, a taste of breezes and sun and that aroma right after lightning? On the other hand, deviled eggs with every meal, from January to December ... now there's an idea.

Comfort food

I'm not usually to be found without an appetite. If there's one thing I enjoy, it's eating.

So I found myself in an unusual position today. After a very stressful morning -- an initiative I was trying to push forward was imploding -- I found myself at lunchtime, but with no desire to eat. I was angry, shaking, and couldn't bring myself to leave my desk, thinking that if I just stared out the window a little longer I could figure out how to fix the situation. But I knew I needed to eat, because thanks to my evening class tonight I was going to have to grab dinner on the run, too, and it wasn't likely to be very satisfying.

What do I want to eat in that situation? I had to think for a long time. Finally I settled on fast food fries. Hot, filling, something I frequently crave (but wasn't really at that moment). It was the right choice. I felt almost back to normal afterwards.

What do you reach for when you need comfort food?

Unsolicited testimonial

It's our first day without Noel, who at last report was in Salt Lake City about to board a shuttle for his ultimate Sundance destination. (Apologies to sundry readers, but the blog is going to take a decidedly family-update turn for the duration of his absence.)

I managed to get the kids off to school and picked up on time, and in between I fulfilled work obligations of the ordinary kind. After their afternoon snack, a half-hour of "Bill Nye the Science Guy," and an hour of Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics, we struck out for dinner.

The school was having a fundraiser at a local pizza franchise, and I couldn't be happier about that. First, it relieved me of having to give a single thought to what's for dinner. Second, the place has a private club license. Done and done!

Now I have to confess that I've never been to the local franchise in question, even though its locations are dotted all over central Arkansas. So there was one bit of uncertainty in our trip. I wasn't familiar with the menu, and I didn't know how easy it would be to get the kids their usual cheese pizza, find something reasonable for myself, and get everyone bundled off home before bedtime.

It was a tiny bit disheartening to arrive and find a very limited selection of non-pizza items on the menu. A couple of salads, a lonely listing of spaghetti and meatballs, sure; but no calzones, no subs, no anything that might be considered a normal meal for one person. So I ordered a ten-inch spinach and four cheese pie for myself, hoping to save some for lunch tomorrow, and a kiddie cheese pizza for each of my children.

Pleasant surprise number one: The waitress asked permission and then brought two hunks of uncooked pizza dough for the kids to play with while we waited on our food. Cady Gray immediately began a game which involved me guessing which color crayon was hidden in her pizza dough, while Archer flattened it like a pancake and delightedly commenced flipping it.

Pleasant surprise number two: The waitress invited the kids to make their own pizza. When the crust was ready, she called them up to the counter to spread the sauce around and cover it with cheese. You've never seen happier kids anticipating the eating of pizzas they made themselves. Well, until you saw them actually eating it. "That was the best meal of my life!" Cady Gray proclaimed as we left the place about 45 minutes after we arrived, me toting a box with half of my (absolutely delicious, very hard to keep from eating on past halfway) spinach-cheese pie.

So put a mark in the success column for Day 1's effort to keep the kids fed, clothed, and in the right place at the right time. Tomorrow couldn't be more exciting: Archer's Powerpoint presentation for his Pinnacle gifted & talented group at school, chess club, and a visit from a babysitter in the evening while I fulfill some academic obligations. Tune in next time for the full report!

Suddenly to just turn the page

Today's post about obsessions in bulk is at Toxophily.

As wonderful as our Thanksgiving meal was, one element was missing: traditional stuffing. I got to have hot, bready, celeryish, yellow-orange, rosemary-and-sage scented stuffing today at Archer's third grade Christmas lunch. It was the very definition of cafeteria heaven.

We haven't thought at all about Christmas dinner yet, seeing as we're going to be here all by ourselves. But I know what I'd like. Pancakes for breakfast and turkey and stuffing for lunch, with plenty of sandwiches and apples for a pre-bedtime snack.

In decline

I had an errand to run in a certain part of town, so I thought I'd visit a fast-food establishment over there that's not in my usual rotation. I probably haven't been there in six months or more. But after a run with Archer this morning, I had a craving for one of their burgers.

When I arrived, it was five minutes after opening. Cars were lined up at the drive-through, but I was the first to pull in and park. I grabbed my book and my purse and walked up to the door -- only to find it locked. Checked the hours; yep, supposed to open five minutes ago. Walked around to the other side -- locked.

I peered in the window and saw a couple exiting the other side of the restaurant, and then an employee coming toward my side. She opened the doors and said, "You can come inside, but I'm the only one here. The others will be here in a few minutes."

As I waiting, I thought about what it meant if a franchise doesn't have employees who show up for opening. It's a sign of a business in decline.

Noel and I used to go to a pasta franchise not far from where I was having lunch today. By the last time we went, some menu items were listed as unavailable, and the food was served on paper plates from the nearby Wal-Mart. The franchise couldn't afford to get its supplies from the main office. It was the last gasp. Shortly thereafter, the building was up for sale (and so it still remains today).

I find the experience of visiting a failing business depressing. It's like throwing good money after bad. I can no longer help them, and they know that; so why should they care about me? Driving back to my office, I almost expected to find it as abandoned and dysfunctional as the restaurant. Failure feels like a virus that could easily spread.

A case study

I'm alone with the kids for about 32 hours this weekend, because Noel is appearing on a panel at the Ozark Foothills FilmFest. And I really should be taking notes, because somewhere in my attempts at successful parenting surely lie lessons I could apply as an administrator and manager.

After a productive afternoon of Mario Kart, Hyper Jump and outside play, it was time to settle on a dinner location. Since it's important for the kids to have buy-in, I asked them where they'd like to go. Cady Gray immediately piped up, nominating our local barbecue joint. I contributed my suggestion of the local Mexican place (the one with the magaritas). Archer decided to throw in his lot with me, thanks to my heavy emphasis on agreeability during playtime this afternoon.

Cady Gray wouldn't budge, though. Archer the peacemaker suggested that we go to the barbecue place next time; Cady Gray immediately countered with the plan that we go to the Mexican place next time. Seeing how much it meant to her, I asked Archer if that was okay, and he assented. Problem solved -- barbecue for dinner it would be.

Only when we got in the car, I remembered something. The kids' standard dinner at the barbecue place is grilled cheese and fries. But they had told me that they went to the chicken finger place for lunch, and there they always eat ... grilled cheese and fries. As I was buckling them in, I reminded them that they can't have the same meal twice in one day. Again I proferred the Mexican option.

Cady Gray, unwilling to let go so easily, said that they could have something else at the barbecue place. Archer was on a different train of thought already, ready to abandon both and head for an as-yet-unnamed third restaurant. All I had to do, in the end, was make the case that a quesadilla with beans and rice is sufficiently different from a grilled cheese sandwich with fries, and my Mexican scheme won the day with smiling nods from all passengers.

Now if I could only figure out how to apply those skills to faculty meetings, there'd be no stopping me. Unfortunately, it's entirely possible that the motivating factor -- the magarita -- is the crucial ingredient.

The best turkey in the world

For the past several years, I've gone to great trouble (and Noel has gone to great expense) to brine my turkey, the Alton Brown way.

What kind of trouble? You have to defrost the turkey a day early. (For me, this usually means half a day spent changing the water every half hour while speed-defrosting.) You have to buy vegetable stock in such quantities that the price rivals the turkey itself. You have to soften brown sugar. (At least I have to, because I use brown sugar about twice a year; put a bowl of water in the microwave beside it and nuke for 2 minutes or so.) You have to numb your hands chucking a half-gallon of ice into a bucket. You have to get up in the middle of the night to turn the turkey over in the brine.

But I would never consider making a turkey without the brine treatment. A brined turkey is moist, juicy, and tasty all the way through. It's absolutely foolproof.

I also use the Alton Brown trick of putting the bird in at 500 degrees for half an hour to get a beautiful golden brown skin on the top, then turning the oven down to 350 and putting an aluminum foil shield over the breast to keep it from overcooking. Throw in an electronic probe thermometer that beeps when the turkey reaches the target temperature, and there is nothing that can ruin your meal except lumpy gravy.



And once again this year, our turkey was perfect inside and out. If you've never brined, you don't know what you're missing. Ditch the hit-and-miss recipes, go for the bucket and the kosher salt, and never serve dry turkey again.

Danish dining

A quick rundown of the culinary side of my recent trip:



Here's a typical spread at the student center. You can see chicken, potatoes, pasta salad, vegetables, and a couple of different fish plates.




The three-course conference banquet was almost ridiculously posh. Here's the meat course, with artfully arranged parsnip and beet.




And this was dessert -- a chocolate cake with ganache topping and ice cream.




Danishes do exist in Denmark, but they are not called Danishes.




I tried to eat as cheaply as possible -- this single-huge-pizza-slice lunch cost me 25 kroner, or about $4.50.




On my last night in Denmark, I treated myself to this delectable plate of spaghetti bolognese. No matter where you go, pasta's usually a safe bet, and sometimes it's truly remarkable.

Grabbing a bite

I have a mental list of Things That People Do In Movies That Fascinate Me. Here's one that I can't wrap my brain around:

People in movies and on TV go to restaurants when it is not time for a meal.

I don't just mean that they go to restaurants at non-meal hours (e.g., 10 am or 3 pm). I mean that these characters spontaneously decide to go "grab a bite to eat" regardless of whether they have recently had a meal, or whether it's about time for another one.

The typical scenario involves two people meeting, making a connection, and then one asking the other, "You hungry? Wanna go get something to eat?" What I can't understand is that the answer appears to have nothing to do with a calculation about the day's three squares. The other character will delightedly reply, "Sure!" Meanwhile, on the couch I'm thinking, "But ... you can't just have a meal because you want to spend more time with somebody! How can you order an entree when you don't intend for it to be breakfast, lunch, or dinner -- just hanging out?"

Don't these people understand that a meal rearranges your whole day? When you eat determines when you're going to eat next. How is this spontaneous late afternoon repast going to affect dinnertime? Are you going to skip it? Eat it at 9 or 10 pm? How can you claim to be hungry when presumably you ate lunch at a normal hour?

I find it easier to comprehend "Wanna grab a cup of coffee or something?" But it's amazing how often people on TV or in the movies eat full meals at the drop of a hat, seemingly without any concern for the normal rhythms of daily food ingestion. As if they are quasi-human creatures who eat only when they are hungry, untouched by the cultural conventions of mealtimes that we mere mortals find difficult to ignore.

Incredible, edible

If I could have only one food for the rest of my life, I'd be hard pressed to pick anything I enjoy more than eggs. Always smooth, satisfying, and creamy, eggs speak to me of home cooking, food prepared for everyday and special occasions alike. Eggs mean abundance -- they always come in batches. They're the perfect opportunity for spice and condiments like black pepper, sour cream, paprika, hot sauce.

I like eggs just about any way -- poached, scrambled, sunny-side-up, in an omelette. (I really like poached eggs, since my family rarely ate them at home and I associate them with hotels.) But my favorite way to have eggs is deviled. Hard-cooked eggs in and of themselves are nearly perfect; I could lunch every day on crusty bread, hard cheese, tart apples, peanut butter and hard boiled eggs with just a little salt. But when you mix the yolks with dijon mustard and mayonnaise and spoon them back into the perfect half-globe cups formed by the split whites, there's nothing I want more. You can put a little sweet pickle relish in if you want -- that additional crunch and salty brininess is welcome, in small doses.

I can't handle hard-cooked eggs without thinking of my mother's potato salad, which she sometimes let me help make. I see a brown stoneware bowl heaped high with boiled potatoes and white hard-cooked eggs, and my childhood self perched on a stool peeling the eggs one by one, then peeling and dicing the potatoes.

After Easter there are always hard-cooked eggs on hand, which provides the perfect excuse for breaking out deviled eggs, the perfect picnic food, a little ahead of season. Tonight I had Archer and Cady Gray doing their best approximation of an East Lawn egg roll in our hallway to warm up the eggs from the refrigerator and keep them out from underfoot while I peeled. A few days ago when I made our first post-Easter deviled eggs, I used four eggs, two halves for each of us, reasoning that I'd give Cady Gray and Archer one half each and then eat their other half myself. But they foiled me by buying the deviled egg hype I'd been building and demanding the other half. So this time I over-deviled in order to be sure to have plenty for me.

Leftover heaven

I spent my teenage years at one of Chattanooga's exclusive prep schools. And I spent the greater proportion of those years somewhat overweight. The connection between those two facts was the school cafeteria, a daily dose of culinary delights that bore little resemblance to the steam trays and lunchrooms most high schoolers remember. The chef churned out unlimited quantities of classic Southern cooking that did a number on my waistline for six years. Whenever I need to convey to someone how different this experience was from the norm, I tell them about the trays of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies that would be brought out midway through the lunch period, steaming hot, and left on the dessert tables for us to grab as many as we wanted. That and the icebox chocolate cream pies.

But my very favorite dish at the GPS cafeteria was the turkey divan. At the time I had no idea what made this broccoli, turkey, and white sauce dish so transcendent. It was served in small bowls, and one bowl was never enough for me -- I would wait until the line had disappeared toward the end of the period and go back for seconds and thirds. Something in the gratined finishing of the dish, the slightly crispy texture of the top and the unidentifiable tangy bite of the sauce, bespoke love and pure pleasure to me.

God bless my fellow Bruiser and best bud Doc Thelma. She posted the recipe, Noel made it with some of the remains of my brined turkey tonight, and I enjoyed not just my portion but most of Cady Gray's as well. The secret ingredient? A hint of curry in that white sauce. It was exactly as I remembered it, and only required a warm Toll House cookie to complete my personal flashback to 1982.

Doc, if you can unearth the construction of that Bright School graham-cracker-and-chocolate frosting dessert that I loved at age seven, I believe I can die happy.

Embarrassing Moments: Food Edition

Proactive Bridesmaid's tale of mistaken breakfast buffet identity made me laugh out loud last night. It also reminded me of one of the funniest stories my friend Mike ever told in my presence.

Seems that Mike was at a buffet with friends, and on one of his trips to the steam tables he encounters a vat of yellow, fluffy, mousse-like material that he can't identify. So he scoops up a spoonful and glops it onto his plate. Back at the table, he starts eating it, remarking to his dining companions that he still can't figure out what it is. It's sweet, but it's not pudding, and it's not any recognizable flavor. One of his friends gives him a strange look. "Mike," he says. "That's butter."

Two food-related embarrassments spring to my mind, although neither of them involves a buffet. When I was a kid, my mom made shrimp cocktail for some fancy dinner party she was hosting (it was the seventies, when people served shrimp cocktail at home on sufficiently elegant occasions). I really enjoyed it, gnawing away at the kids' table in the breakfast nook. When Mom came to clear away the plates, she looked at my clean one. "Where are the shells?" she asked. I had eaten the entire shrimp, shell, tails, and all.

The other one also involves fancy food. On a visit to Miami, I went out with my former employer and bandmate Ben Lahey to a South Beach restaurant. The dish I order had a garnish of wasabi paste, which I had never seen before. In all innocence I scooped up a bit on my fork. "Careful, it's really hot," said Ben, but of course I thought: how hot can it be? I spent the next several minutes insisting that it wasn't really all that bad, and of course I'd had it before and knew what I was doing, while trying to dab away the tears from my eyes and casually get ice water refills.