Corn Tortillas!!!

Tap, tap, tap…is this thing on?

So it’s been awhile since I’ve been here.  And there’s a reason for that.  Because most of the major happenings in my life over the last several months have had to do with work, and as we know, blogging about things that happen at work is an almost sure ticket to blogging as a full-time job.  So I’ve elected instead to not blog.  But we’re now in week 22 of Stuff We Can’t Talk About On The Internet, and I’m tired of not blogging anymore, so I’m going to try something a little different.  

We’re going to indulge in a Food Post.

Really, all of this is my girlfriend Christy’s fault.  Last week, she posted a blog entry on my Facebook page about a woman who was making flour tortillas.  Christy thought this woman was all perky and funny and said, “I want you to blog about cooking.  You haven’t blogged about cooking since your potato salad recipe.  By the way, a very charismatic gay friend of mine made ten pounds of your potato salad for Independence Day this year because of your blog.  Ten Pounds.  That’s power, I tell you.  So tell me a story about cooking.”

So here’s the problem:  I really am not fond of flour tortillas.  They are cellophane-wrapped bits of dubious foodstuff that invariably become gummy and unappetizing in one’s mouth and every time I eat them, a little blob of white goo gets stuck in a crevice between my right incisor and the adjoining tooth.  That, plus, Christy is one of the many members of my circle of friends who has recently discovered (or decided) they are gluten intolerant.  I call them my Gluten Heads.  And flour=gluten.

Corn tortillas, on the other hand, are delightful bits of food-wrapping goodness.  Delicate in consistency, slightly sweet, small enough to cause one not to super-size the fillings, they are to flatbread what truffles are to mushrooms.

So I set out to find a good corn tortilla recipe.  I thought this might be a challenge.  Given that one rarely finds corn tortillas in the grocery store, and that even Mexican restaurants often do not feature them, I have lived under the impression that preparation of a good corn tortilla was complicated, and therefore restricted to the expertise of the Mexican Grandma-types who can be found in the windows of Old-Town San Diego eateries.  I have often equated the preparation of corn tortillas to be akin to Cuban Cigars that are “Rolled on the Thighs of Island Women”, as the stalls in Key West would have you believe.

Lo and Behold, the morning after I embark on this journey to find The Perfect Corn Tortilla Recipe, this month’s Fine Cooking arrives on my doorstep.  The feature this month involved Corn Tortillas, and the festooning thereof.  Quelle chance!  I eagerly ripped into the magazine, focusing on the recipe as though I had uncovered the secret to the perfect Krabby Pattie.  I zeroed in on the ingredient list to learn that the ingredients were:

Masa Harina (that’s corn flour, to the rest of us)

Water

Salt.

Now if you’re like me, you will stop at this point and look at the back of your computer to see if there are some words that may inadvertently have slipped off the screen and slid behind your desk.  I assure you, they have not.

Being trained in the sciences, I have been forced over the years to take a statistics class or two.  Because of this, I am able to make the following calculation.  Corn has an 87.94% chance of encountering both water and salt without any human intervention whatsoever.  With this in mind, let’s revisit the ingredient list: 

1)      Corn

2)      Stuff that exists in Corn’s natural habitat

In other words, Corn.  That’s it.  Just…corn.  Seriously?  How could I pass this up?

Challenge #1 is finding good quality Masa Harina.  I live in the epicenter of rural whiteness in north-central Ohio.  So I drove toward Lorain, which has the largest Puerto Rican population outside of Puerto Rico.  They also have some of the most bitchin’ foodstuffs in the universe.  The go-to brand for Masa Harina is Maseca

This is the stuff.

I set the iPod to play a little Rodrigo y Gabriella, and headed for the kitchen.  Following the recipe on the bag (the Fine Cooking recipe called for, like, eight pounds of masa and a truckload of water.  I wanted to make about a dozen tortillas), mix 2 cups of masa with a half teaspoon of salt and 1 ¼  cups of warm water.  Use your hand to knead it together for a minute or two.  You want to make sure it holds together but not let it get too wet.  

Here’s a good test of the water content:  Roll about two tablespoons of the mixture into a ball (it’ll be about 1 ½ inches in diameter).  Now flatten it slightly.  If it forms deep crevices in around the edges, it’s too dry.  If it feels wet to the touch, it’s too wet.  Think Play-Doh.

This batch should make about 16 dough balls.  Cover the dough balls with a damp towel until you’re ready for them

Now, the masa bag and the magazine both recommend using a tortilla press for this next part.  I have a very well-appointed kitchen but do not have a tortilla press.  I do, however, have a really big heavy cast iron skillet.

This frying pan weighs about 192 pounds.

Place a dough ball between two pieces of plastic wrap and flatten with your tortilla press.  Or if you’re me, whap it really hard with the skillet.  I sent cats flying to the four corners of the globe with this one!

 Alas, the result was a bit too small and too thick for my taste, so I fell back to my trusty old rolling pin for the finish.  The results were somewhat less than perfectly round, but still quite serviceable.

I used my pancake griddle for the cooking.  You can also use a good heavy frying pan.  No need to grease; they don’t stick.  I set mine for about 325-350.  That’s solidly medium-high for those of you on the stovetop.

Remove the plastic wrap and slap the tortilla down on the cooking surface.  The slapping thing ensures that no bubbles form under the tortilla.  I cooked mine for about a minute to a minute-and-a-half per side.  It’s done when it starts to dry out a little and maybe gets a bit brown.  

That’s it.  Cover them up with a damp towel until you are done with the rest of the tortillas, or until you develop tendonitis in your wrist from wielding that big heavy frying pan and all that tortilla-slapping.  

Daisy Mae proclaimed them too sweet and grabbed one of the flour bombs out of the fridge.  What do kids know anyway?  I thought they were delicious, and they seemed to have the right balance of flexibility and strength.  I’ll make them again. Especially now that I know how stupid easy they are.

Corn.  Who knew?

Whew!  That was, like, three entries in one, now wasn’t it?

Next time, we’ll explore white shrimp pizza with sun dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts.

Death of a Laptop: A Tech Support Tale in Haiku

One of the mixed blessings of keeping a public blog is that, while you can share your thoughts and activities with the world, your thoughts and activities are shared, well, with the world.  Which is fine, except when the main focus of your thoughts and activities is stuff going on at work.  And your colleagues know where you live.  Then it's best to keep your mouth shut.  Hence my recent silence.  Hopefully, we can resume our normal programming soon.  Because seriously: I love what I do and I like to share positive stuff when it happens. 

In the meantime, my trusty laptop decided to be not so trusty yesterday, which is to say that I re-booted it at 11:15 yesterday morning because it was being "tweaky" and it puked all over my desk and refused to work for the rest of the day.

Two things to remember about me:  1) I'm a geek; and 2) I'm a geek.

Being a geek, I engaged my tech support in the geekiest way possible, which is to say that I emailed my favorite tech support guy with the following support ticket explanation, and the ensuing conversation over the last 27 hours.  In Haiku.



All that which functioned
Now abides, silent, dark
config.sys?  Vanished

A screen, blue as sky
Returns again and again
I search for answers

Access to email
So long taken for granted
Now?  Prayers are needed

Diagnostics fail
No match for this new problem
Behold!  A doorstop!

Flaunting policy
My Carbonite back-up is
worth its weight in gold

Leaving town Tuesday?
Off to great adventures, but
your laptop won't be.

So I'm off to see if I can beg an extra machine off a friend for the next two weeks, scrub it, re-load all my files, and see if I can get it working from the road.    Awesome.

It's that pesky magnet in your butt, actually.

I have another confession to make.  Yeah; I have a lot of confessions.  I'm like that.

Apparently, I am possessed of a strong and perhaps singular ability to attract graduate students that crash and burn half-way through their programs.  Of the seven I've had in the last four years, three of them have just fallen apart at the seams, and either dropped out and returned to the lab, flaked out and returned to Eastern Europe, or vanished without a trace.


I just got two new ones about three months ago.  Lost another one already.  I called it the minute she walked in the door.


The kids who do well in programs like this (our program combines a fairly rigorous science curriculum and an even more rigorous business curriculum) are kids who have had to struggle in their science programs to date.  The reason is simple:  They're not scientists.  They went into science because they were good at it and their parents wanted them to become doctors.  They struggle in science because their minds are wired for something much less specialized, much more risky, and altogether more...integrated...than lab work.  More Entrepreneurial.

Entrepreneurs are, at their core, absolutely comfortable with failure.  If you don't fail at least twice for every success you have as an entrepreneur, you haven't pushed yourself hard enough.  If we're training entrepreneurs, we need to get them used to not having all the answers, to living with uncertainty and with the idea that even your mentor can't predict with certainty if your answer will actually be the right one.

The kids who have struggled with science -- with the rigidity, the memorization, the rules, the laws, the concept that there are potentially immutable constants -- they fight against rules.  They are comfortable with failure.  They embrace risk.  And frankly, because they have learned to fight with absolutes and "right" and "wrong" they have, by definition, learned to fall on their faces without breaking their noses...or at least they've learned to make a crooked nose look attractive.  


Some of the kids who walk through this door have never failed at anything in their lives.  Further, because Science (!) has "rules" and "laws" associated with it, it's fairly easy to spot when you're just plain wrong about something, at least at the Undergrad level.  All these rules and laws get turned on their heads in graduate school, but the science programs sort of ease you into that whole concept.  Not so with an entrepreneurship program.  There is a mindset that says, "I'm good a science...brilliant, really.  In fact, I'm just really, really frickin' smart overall.  And these business types are morons, you know?  So if I can just study the rules and theory of business, I can take all these smarts and go off and follow the formula and make a ton of money."  Which turns out all to be complete bullshit, if you're dealing with human elements like caprice and greed.  This rocks. their. world.

Which still doesn't explain why the over-achiever types all end up working for me.  Perhaps because at that age, I got the same headache-inducing wake-up slap.  And while I stumbled and fell, I also learned to get up and dust off and move on to better things.

I'm happy to take these kids on; to help them stand up and dust off.  Does the dean sense this and deliberately send these kids to me?  Do I drive them to the brink?  Maybe I'm boot camp.  But seriously, I just need some competent help that resists the urge to have a nervous breakdown when things go wrong.

Welcome to Mayberry!

OK, having recovered from last night's bout of self-loathing (ok, not really, but I'm putting on a braver face today), let's move on to something more upbeat.

My husband's aunt posted this from the local paper  It's the police blotter.

Lagrange and Grafton are the two communities next to mine.  But these could have come from my neighborhood.  Be forewarned...we do not look kindly at people who poke dead squirrels with a stick.

Personally, I'm interested in knowing who lives next to North Park and sits in their front window all day with binoculars.  Because you know that's what's happening...

LaGrange police

Thursday, March 17
7:27 p.m. — 100 block Keywood, unruly juveniles were slamming a man’s grill lid and knocking on the back glass door to his residence.
Friday, March 18
7:40 p.m. — Commerce Park, a couple juveniles were seen playing with an air soft gun in the woods. They were told to leave the property.
Saturday, March 19
1 a.m. — 300 block S. Center St., Convenient Food Mart, the doughnut delivery man reported that the box he leaves doughnuts in had several business cards, receipts and medication. An employee said the items belonged to her and must have fallen out of her pocket into the box.
3:15 p.m. — 190 block Railroad St., a woman called the police because her 10-year-old son was being unruly. According to the woman, all of her children were cleaning the house, but he was not listening to her. The officers were called back to the residence at 4:15 p.m. because the 10-year-old was then arguing with the other children.
10:53 p.m. — South Center Street, Adam McGregor, 20, Grafton, was charged with driving under suspension and illumination of rear registration.
Monday, March 21
5:15 p.m. — Commerce Drive, a purse was found outside. The lady, who resides in Medina County, said it was stolen in November 2010 while she was in Strongsville. The purse was returned to her.
Wednesday, March 23
2:49 a.m. — East Main and Railroad streets, Jason Murphy, 23, North Ridgeville, cited for failure to reinstate and illumination of rear registration.

Grafton police

Tuesday, March 15
10:28 a.m. — 1100 block State St., a woman advised that she could hear her neighbor in a nearby apartment yelling and screaming at her 5-year-old son. She reported that she always hears her yelling at him through her walls. An officer spoke with the mother who said her son would not go to school that day and that he was fine.
5:01 p.m. — 400 block Main St., a woman wanted to speak with an officer in reference to her ex-husband who may show up at her place of employment. She stated that she was in court with him earlier that day. There is no restraining order against him and she was afraid for her safety when she left work.
Wednesday, March 16
7 p.m. — North Park, a resident reportedly saw a juvenile at the park who had a stick and was poking smaller kids on the swings. The officer spoke with the boy, who promised to behave himself.
Friday, March 18
6:12 p.m. — North Park, a resident saw juveniles playing with a dead squirrel on a stick. The juveniles were advised to not play with dead squirrels on a stick.
Saturday, March 19
3:22 p.m. — North Park, a resident advised he saw a juvenile with a pocket knife at the park. The juvenile was advised to keep the pocket knife in his pocket.
9:02 p.m. — 1000 block Wellfleet, a vehicle was egged.
Sunday, March 20
8:30 a.m. — 1000 block Plymouth, vehicles and homes were egged.
Monday, March 21
6:59 p.m. — 700 block Main St., an officer saw people throwing items out the front door. They advised the officer that they were spring cleaning.

My own personal pound book.

My friend Alison forwarded a link on my Google Reader today.  It's about a woman who cannot see the beauty that she is and it's dedicated to all the rest of the women out there who cannot see their own beauty. I look at the picture this woman posted and I see an absolutely lovely woman with beautiful hair, a beautiful smile and a lovely, joyful daughter.  She can't see any of it.  I totally get it.  Her story speaks to me and my fragile self-esteem in a deafening way right now. 

There is a part of me who wants to upload my photo so I can get all these affirmations and ride all this positive wave with the rest of them.  But I won't.  I can't. 

Because right now, when I look in the mirror, I'm not liking what I see.  I see a woman who looks, literally, 10 years older than she did 18 months ago.  I have dark circles that won't go away.  I had a head full of curly, thick hair before Kes died; fully half of it is gone, to the point where I'm wondering if I need to try medication to make it come back.  I have crow's feet on my crow's feet.  I need to lose 40 pounds, and for the first time ever in my life, I have fat around my tummy.  I have enough grays that I actually NEED to color my hair now. People used to comment on my eyes; they have always been my best feature.  Anymore, there is no sparkle there.  I look in that mirror and I see a woman who looks exhausted, weary, haggard. 

And I don't like it.


I am angry at the universe.  I am angry that some insidious DNA mutation not only took the joy from my heart, but that it saw fit to leave the scars of that insult on my face for all to see.  

Maybe in time, things will look different.  Maybe, as my heart heals (IF my heart heals), the sparkle will come back. 

Maybe next week.  Maybe next month.  But not now.

Chapter 9: In which we learn to hold back.

March 12, 2011

There is a little girl, around eight years old, sitting on her mother’s lap across from me at the Philadelphia gate at Reagan Airport.  She has shoulder-length brown hair.  She is wearing leggings with Hello Kitty on them, along with a belt that belongs on a child five years her senior.  She’s at that age where her body is starting to get away from her, and her arms and legs hang off her mother’s lap at awkward angles.  She doesn’t notice. She is comfortable. Her mother patiently arranges the girl’s limbs against her own, not wanting to move her, because she knows that the day when her daughter won’t want to share her lap is imminent.

The girl is playing a Nintendo DS.  Cookin’ Mama, which was one of Kiersten’s favorite games.  The sound of the game is tearing my heart out.  I keep hearing the music and the ridiculous Japanese approximation of English as she finishes each step in the recipe.  I close my eyes and I can almost feel Kiersten playing, snuggled in the next chair, her head resting on my shoulder. 

She sat like that the day she died, as we waited for Steve’s car to be finished at the Ford dealership.  She was curled up in the chair next to mine, her body resting easily against me.  I kissed the top of her head several times, inhaling the smell of her.  I can recall the smell of her hair now.  I couldn’t do that in the first several months.  I can also recall the exact feeling of the warmth of her body on my right shoulder as she leaned against me.  That memory isn’t as painful as it used to be.  It doesn’t make me want to scream and cry.  But it still hurts like hell, and my shoulder suddenly feels cold for the lack of her warmth.

Looking across at the little girl with the DS, I find I want to say something to her.  I want to tell her how much Kiersten loved her DS and how much she loved that game.  I want to tell her mother not to take for granted the casual ease of her daughter’s body against her own.  I want to tell her to give her daughter extra hugs and kisses every night.  To never let her forget for a single day to let her baby know how much she’s loved. 

I can’t do that, of course.  People become nervous when you approach them in airports and discuss their children.  It’s an instinctive mother reaction to shy away, to put your children behind you.  And starting the conversation means I have to finish it, which means I have to tell them a story about how all that casual ease can be taken away in a heartbeat.  It isn’t fair to the recipient.  But there’s a part of me that wants to tell the story anyway.  There’s a part of me that still, even now, wants to walk up to every parent I see and look them in their eyes and tell them that my baby, my heart and soul, is dead.  There's a part of me wants each of them to hurt for my loss. 

It’s selfish.  I know that. 

I know that, which is why I remain quiet and pull my jacket over my shoulder and listen and remember. 

Priorities

Charlie Sheen, Age 47, is all over the news because he's a lesbian rock-star warlock from Mars celebrity drug addict. 

Andrew Wilfahrt, age 31, Brian Tabada  age 21, Rudolph Hizon age 22, Chauncy Mays age 25, Christopher Stark age 22, David Fahey Jr age 23, Kristopher Gould age 25, and Nicholas Alden age 25 are members of our armed services who gave their lives this week with little or no media mention outside of their home towns. 

May they rest in peace.

For each of their deaths, there are 10 more service members who lay wounded in military hospitals and who may never regain their quality of life.

 May we give them the support and attention they deserve.

The Sin of Rationality

"Seriously; the rest of us don't know what to do with the rest of them."

My friend, Christy, is a centrist Republican.  She was referring to the far right political  fringe element, which she openly and unapologetically calls "tea-baggers". 

Christy believes the free market will generally take care of most of our economic issues; she believes there is nothing wrong with prayer in schools; she believes that abortion should be safe and legal but not necessarily free and easy.  She also believes the social safety net is not a bad thing, so long as it doesn't become a crutch, but that much of the work of that safety net can be accomplished by strong communities that take care of their own, not by the Federal Government with lots of intermediaries.   She thinks unions have their place in protecting the rights and wages of those who would otherwise be unfairly treated by their employers, but believes that there is a lot of corruption and waste at the highest levels of some of them.

In short, she thinks like about 70-80% of everyone in this country.

So why is it that the 20-30% minority of this nation, who represent the far right and far left fringes of our social and political beliefs, seem to be setting the agenda for the rest of us? 

A friend of mine, who makes his living promoting a lot of capitalist ideals, cautioned me to back-pedal the other day when I called him out for being a "lefty".  "I'm a closet lefty.  Closet.  Christ, you keep talking like that and they'll think I'm a goddamn bleeding heart like you."

"Yeah, C; the clue bus?  Leaving the station.  Dude, you have four advanced degrees, you serve on a board that takes care of under-privileged kids, and your mom is a lesbian.  Ain't no 'closet' about it."

Despite the fact that we were on a private phone call, he shushed me.  "How do I maintain my credibility with my co-workers if they know my politics?"

So what gives here?  We have Republicans who clearly feel a lack of comfort with the direction of their party.  We have fiscal conservatives who are afraid to reveal they are social liberals, because a small and extremely vocal minority tell them they must be "in for a penny, in for a pound."

What he heck ever happened to rationality?  Why is it sinful to be in the middle, to accept some of the wisdom of both sides and to reflect the needs, wants and aspirations of the vast majority among us? 

Have we lost our minds?

 

Note to self:

Strom Thurmond and Strobe Talbott are NOT the same person!!

Colleague:  "I think we can get Strobe Talbott to deliver the keynote for this session"

Me:  "Strobe Talbott?  Didn't he die, like 10 years ago?  Something to do with can of Pepsi and pubic hair?"

Colleague:  "Um...no.  That was Strom Thurmond.  Similar, but...no; I take that back.  Not similar at all.  You deserve a head slap for that."

Sheesh.  I'm such a moroon sometimes.

Welcome, Comrades!

Ok, I'll admit it:  Sometimes, I like to check my blog stats to see who has stopped by and whether there are any new faces out there.   (I've Googled myself a few times too, just to see what the world is saying about me behind my back.  Call it narcissism if you want, but I just like to know, OK?  Don't judge me.  Especially as you sit there picking your toes at your desk because you think no one is looking.  Because believe me, they are.)

So anyway, the last 48 hours has brought a flood of hits (like, 25 or so a day -- I'm not all that popular, so 25 is a flood) from a bunch of IP addresses across the Russian Federation.  And not all from the same city. 

So hey there!  If you're in Mother Russia, drop a comment so I know you're not all a bunch of crazy stalker-types, looking to steal my identity or anything, OK?

Thanks.

xoxo

Bean