18 Nov 2014

Mary’s Cheesy Biscuits: A Recipe For All

by | posted in: Food | 0
Pyrex mixing bowl, circa my 4th grade year.
From one bowl, many tasty but shapeless foods have come.

The Thanksgiving holiday is nearly upon us. I wonder if I might contribute an idea as you plan your meal. If someone coming to dinner has Crohn’s or Colitis, you might already have special (read: expensive and time-consuming) foods on your menu, but I’ll offer my suggestion anyway in hopes you don’t know anyone with either disease and you can just take my recipe as amusing and possibly worth making and serving.

I make these cheesy biscuits. They taste so good and they do not destroy me. They will taste good to you and will not destroy you, either. And now:

Mary’s Non-Destroying Cheesy Biscuits

Big portion of farmer’s cheese
Bunch of blanched almond meal (also called almond flour, but only get the blanched kind)
A whole lot of grated, quality parmesan cheese (not that Kraft stuff in the green can! For shame!)
Couple eggs
Salt + pepper

Serves: A lot, I’m not sure. What’s a serving?

Mix farmer’s cheese (also called dry-curd cottage cheese; hard to find but findable and not the same as regular cottage cheese for lord’s sake) and the eggs in a big mixing bowl. A wooden spoon is fine for stirring, but if you have a big mixer, great. Pour in some of the almond meal. Then some of the parmesan. Throw in some salt. Little pepper. Keep putting in almond meal and cheese into the bowl and mix it real good so that deep within your soul, you feel like everything is distributed. Add a touch more salt. Just make it look like biscuit batter, kinda lumpy and thick, not runny. (You couldn’t make this stuff runny if you tried because you’re dealing with nuts and cheese. If your batter is runny, you have done something I do not understand.) Spoon lumps of batter onto a non-stick cooky sheet. They should be the size of gooey hockey pucks.

Remember that you forgot to turn on the oven. Turn it on to about 350-degrees. When it’s probably hot enough but who knows for lord’s sake, put the be-biscuited sheet into the oven for like 12 minutes? Set the timer or you will forget. When the timer beeps, check on your biscuits. They will need more time in the oven. I usually turn the sheet around at this point (using hot pads) because our oven in NYC is old and crotchety. Bake the biscuits a little longer. Five minutes? Six? I can’t help you with everything! You’ll have to figure it out. You can smell them when they’re done and when you see that they’re just beginning to brown, they’re for sure done. Take them out of the oven. Attempt to wait for them to cool; fail. Slather your chosen biscuit with butter; keep transferring hot buttered biscuit from one hand to other; blow on biscuit; burn lips; enjoy.

Clearly, I created these on my own and I have no exact amounts of ingredients or time to offer you. I wing ’em every time, but they always turn out fantastic. Just keep adding cheese, and if it gets too dry, add another egg. You’ll be okay.

If you’re interested in gluten-free foods, they are that. If you’re a paleo-person, they are that, also. They are totally non-carb, as well, if you care. All I know is that they taste like cheese, you can put butter on them and most importantly, they actually taste like real biscuits but they do not destroy me.

Good luck!

1 Aug 2014

On Overalls — Not In Them.

by | posted in: Fashion, Rant | 10
Where do I start?
Where do I start?

Amazing!

The mere mention of overalls on women in yesterday’s post inspired comment from both sides of the pant leg. I had no idea this would be so polarizing an issue!

The issue: Can a grown woman wear denim overalls and be taken seriously?

We could phrase the question many different ways. I initially conceived the issue to be, “Can a grown woman look attractive in denim overalls?” but that’s easy: Of course she can. A woman in love can look stunning in a paper sack.* A happy, healthy pregnant woman in denim overalls can look glowy and radiant, too. And if you’re someone with a thing for it, you’ll find any female in overalls (that original onesie) to be straight up hot. To each his own sartorial kink.

We could also ask, “Is there a grown woman on the planet who feels attractive in denim overalls?” but this shows my personal bias. When I have worn overalls, I have felt about as attractive as a caterpillar’s ass. This is due to the realities of my body shape. I have an ample bust and a derrier to match but I do possess a waist — for this, I thank Zeus every day. What overalls do to me is cruel. They eviscerate any hint of a waist. I become a stovepipe. A meaty, Viking, insty-stovepipe who looks like she ought to be butchering a moose with one hand while folding lard into biscuit dough with the other, all while sweating something smelly, like…goat’s milk. None of what I’ve just described makes sense. But neither do overalls on women in urban places in 21st century America! They’re confusing! They don’t understand their reference point! There’s absolutely nothing that works, here!

Are you working? In dirt? No!

Do you have breasts? Yes! You do! A square panel that rests mid-boob is uncomfortable and aesthetically problematic!

I have worn high heels that were impractical and painful but man, did my legs look fabulous because the shoe’s shape elongated my leg. I have donned chandelier earrings from time to time because dammit, I look like Cleopatra in them. Fashion is frequently impractical and silly, but in the case of almost anything other than denim overalls, there are reasons we suffer. Lines are lengthened. Curves are accentuated. The female shape is celebrated or made more mysterious. I’d like to challenge any female on earth — yes, every last one of you — to make denim overalls look mysterious.

[pause]

Mm-hm! Didn’t think so.

Every few years, Fashion declares that overalls (“coveralls” if you hail from certain farming communities in the Midwest where such garments make perfect sense because that’s who they were designed for) are “back.” Pictured above, overalls currently on offer from company that I adore. Reformation makes clothes out of materials considered “deadstock” by other fashion companies: when clothing manufacturers and designers order way too much fabric (this happens all the time) Reformation will use that material for their designs rather than have more made/shipped, etc. It’s a green strategy and the clothes are so great.**

But Reformation. Come on. That model is so pretty. She is so thin. And those overalls are made of nifty denim, possibly taken from some high fashion house like Isabel Marant or Band of Outsiders. You all have done your best! But… I mean… The crotch. It’s so squinchy. And this young woman, she has such tiny boobies, but they are still managing to slowly seep out the sides of her little denim overall’s…frontispiece. I reject your stylist’s choice of shoes here, but could I do any better than that plasticky clog? What is better? Sneakers? A strappy sandal? No! Nothing works. Nothing works because the overalls are all wrong.

I open it to you, reader. Defend your position. Because I’m over(all) it.

Get it? “Over” it? “Over(all) it”? #stoptyping

*I love to think about a woman so in love, she forgets to get dressed when she leaves her lover’s house in the morning. The baker sees her, gasps, and hands her a number of paper sacks to put on. All day, everyone wonders where she got her outfit, if she’s lost weight, what’s new with her, etc.

**I’m wearing a polka-dot Reformation skirt as I write this. I feel very attractive in it!