Almost Mugged Oatmeal Raisin Squares

A couple of Sundays ago I was wandering around SoHo with my sister and Niece Two.  While looking for a place for a quick bite we found ourselves on the corner of Wooster and Prince and I realized that just one week before the block had been surrounded by news vans and police tape.  The investigation into the disappearance of Etan Patz had made headlines again when the police had information that brought them back to the street from which the then six-year old vanished 33 years ago.  I mentioned it to my sister and we both got the chills. 

A lot of people bemoan the loss of the gritty days of New York City in the 70’s.  They feel it seemed “real-er” before gentrification/mall-ification buffed the edges off of almost every neighborhood in Manhattan.  I hate high rises and mega Best Buy’s as much as the next person, but I don’t miss the fear that accompanied the grit, especially post-Etan.  It’s funny (strange, not hah-hah) that when the city was more dangerous parents were less restrictive.  I’ve talked about my teenage late-night bus rides home from dicey neighborhoods but even when I was younger I had freedoms that children don’t have today, when the city is safer than ever. At nine years old I took the cross-town bus home from school alone and at 10 I was babysitting for a child who was five.  Ok, it was during the daytime and yes, I was always a responsible kid, but still, I was ten! 

But the thing is, my childhood was essentially incident free.  Meanwhile when my brother was eight he was shoved off his first curly handled bike and watched the robber speed away into the park.  Then he got to ride around in the squad car looking for the perp.  And my friend Nick, who was walking those same Upper West Side streets during those same years, was mugged at least 5 times (although he used to inflate that number by two-fold just to make his badge of honor even puffier), once out-running the thug who threatened to steal the new size 7 Puma Clydes off his feet.  Those sneakers came in handy.  Believe me, it’s not that I wanted to get roughed up or have my allowance stolen, but I wouldn’t have minded just a little drama, a reason to run breathlessly into the house with a, “you’re not going to believe what happened!”

Actually I sort of did have one moment which, when I think about it now, makes me laugh.  There was a period when the petty crime du jour involved snatching the gold chain off of someone’s neck with a quick yank and a sprint.  One afternoon when I was around 14, I was sent to the Sloan’s supermarket two blocks from our apartment to pick up some groceries for my mother.  As I was paying I noticed a guy hanging out at the end of the check out area.  At first I thought he was a bagger but then he followed me outside.  As I headed north on Lexington Avenue he came along side of me and looked like he had something to say.  I should add that it was summer and it was also the late 70’s so the fact that I was wearing both a lavender polo shirt and a thin gold necklace made sense at the time.

“Hey you!” he said.  I walked a little faster, my arms wrapped tightly around the paper grocery bag.

“Hey you, Bitch!” he said in a loud whisper.   My heart started to beat quickly.  I kept walking and he was right next to me, as if we were friends taking a stroll in Carnegie Hill.  I knew the moment of truth was coming. This was it.  I was going to be mugged.

“Take off the chain.” He said through gritted teeth.  “Nice.  And.  Slow.”

I tried to hold the bag with one arm (he wasn’t the most effective mugger—why didn’t he just push my groceries to the ground, pull the chain and run?) and with the other pretended to be looking for the clasp.  As we walked and I fumbled around my neck the clerk at the news store stepped out to sweep the sidewalk in front of his shop.  I gave him a panicked, wide-eyed look and mouthed a silent, “HELP! HELP!” with a subtle tilt of the head towards my new “friend.”

the news store!

“Hey!  What’s going on here?!”  The nice clerk yelled. “You bothering her?!  Get lost!”

At which point my would-be attacker fled to the corner, made a quick right, and disappeared towards the scarier streets of Third Avenue leaving me, my groceries and my chain intact.  I almost kissed the clerk but instead bought a Milky Way to calm myself down.

By the time I got home I had the breathlessness down, and the sufficient, “Oh my God, you’re not going to believe…” etc etc.  Maybe because the crisis had been averted my tale didn’t garner much of a response.  It was my brother who seemed to care the most, wanting to know every detail, which I shared with as much embellishment as possible without going so far as to say the guy held a knife to my throat.  However there was one crucial piece of information I withheld until relatively recently.  The “guy” was actually a “kid.”  If I was 14 he was probably 12 and if I was 5’4” he was about 5’2.”  Even in my scrawny teenage state I probably could have taken him.  But then I wouldn’t have had the excitement of running up 93rd Street and bursting into our apartment armed with an amazing dramatic tale!  How pathetic is that?!

By telling this story I have probably jinxed my safety record but I had been thinking about it and that period of time a lot since finding myself on that SoHo corner.  During those darker years I used to watch soap operas at a nearby friend’s house whose mother often had treats from the Well-Bred Loaf, a bakery that introduced our neighborhood to amazingly rich and enormous blondies, brownies, cookies and oatmeal chewies.  I have never found their recipes anywhere, so as part of my time traveling I tried to recreate the oatmeal squares doing my own research and tweaking.  I baked three different formulas and none were as decadent, moist and chewy as theirs.  After offering a square from the first attempt to my mother in an impromptu taste test she said, “Tastes like health.”  (A negative review in her book.)  But I realized the situation was as it should be.  Revisiting the past, and 1970’s New York, isn’t really a good thing for a variety of reasons.  And even though my city is safer, I still think twice every time I fasten a necklace.

Almost Mugged Oatmeal Raisin Squares
adapted from Quaker Oats
Printer Friendly Version
Ingredients 
2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
3/4  cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2  cup granulated sugar
2  eggs
1  teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2  cups all-purpose flour
1  teaspoon baking soda
1  teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2  teaspoon salt
2  cups old fashioned oats
1  cup raisins


Preparation 
Heat oven to 350°F
In large bowl, beat butter and sugars on medium speed of electric mixer until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. 

Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well. Add oats and raisins; mix well.

Press dough onto bottom of ungreased 13 x9-inch baking pan.  Bake 25-30 minutes or until light golden brown. 

Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars. Store tightly covered

Pick One Quick Tea Cookies

I’m a firm believer in equality—meaning I think health, good fortune, opportunity and talent should be fairly distributed among everyone.  This thinking is kind of a problem when, as we all learn, life isn’t at all fair.  Of course there are the obvious, horrible examples of lives visited by too much tragedy—the segments on the local news that have you gasping with a combination of sympathy, and a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I.  But I’m talking about the hogging of success.  Think about it.  Why is it fair for a performer to be a “triple threat?”  Isn’t it enough to be “only” a great singer?  Do you also need to be a wonderful actress and superb dancer?  Or think of Oprah who, after taking home the trophy umpteen times, took herself out of competing in the Daytime Emmys.  That was a classy move and one some other actors and hosts might want to contemplate.  The amassing of accolades becomes unseemly and a little unfair to so many others who are working just as hard.  Sure you could say “may the best woman win” but after you’ve been awarded for doing the same thing more than once isn’t it time to let another best woman win?

It’s just so annoying when the scales seem to be tipped so far away from so many who are deserving.  There should be enough hosannas to go around for everyone.  Like people who are really good at more than one career.  One of my favorite books of the last year, Rules of Civility, was written by the successful founder of a hedge fund who somehow found time to write a best-selling novel during his off-hours.  Are you kidding me?  If I hadn’t liked the book so much and if he hadn’t been wonderfully charming and self-deprecating when I heard him interviewed, I would hate him.  But you get my point.  I think the childhood instruction to “just take one” should apply to adults and success.  Pick your one thing and leave some opportunity for the rest of the world.

This psychic trip down injustice lane came to the forefront of my brain most recently when I heard that Elizabeth Gilbert, she of the insanely successful Eat Pray Love, had published a story-filled cookbook.  I’m sorry, it’s not enough that her book was on the bestseller list for years and Julia Roberts played her in the screen adaptation, but she also needs to be a great cook?!  Back off lady!  But still, I had to read it.

Well, it turns out I was kind of wrong.  She had unearthed a cookbook slash memoir written by her great-grandmother, Margaret Yardley Potter, (aka “Gima” to her family) a food writer for a Philadelphia newspaper in the 1940s who published it in 1947.  She’d found it only recently and, thinking that “Gima” had a before-her-time take on cooking and entertaining, Elizabeth decided to “present” it.  Yes, I take issue with the word “presenting.”  It sounds like she’s PT Barnum or something.  But from a publishing/business standpoint I can understand using her name in any way conceivable hoping her golden light will shine on whatever project she is affiliated with. 

While I was reading the book I kept thinking about Katharine Hepburn for some reason.  Maybe because of The Philadelphia Story?  But I had her face in my head the whole time while paging through the story about a dinner party gone haywire after the guest of honor showed up late, the electricity went out and the help got sick, only to be saved by a rousing game of craps played on the living room floor in the dark.  The book is totally charming and evokes the author’s life in a refreshing, honest and funny way.  It’s a breezy narrative peppered with recipes buried in the text.  In a sense, it assumes the reader knows her way around the kitchen, which is a fair assumption if you were a woman in the 1940’s I suppose.  Casual mentions of change in financial fortune don’t depress but just enhance the sense that Gima rolled with the punches while maintaining a really high level of cooking and hospitality.  Leftovers are used creatively, options for less expensive substitutes are offered, all while a certain kind of life is presented: snapshots of afternoons spent on “a cheap hired motorboat” with weekend guests, BLTs, pie and coffee; specific cocktails are included in menu planning (martinis with Indian food?  Of course!); every meal starts with an appetizer and ends with dessert—there is no skimping.  But what I found fascinating was how contemporary the message ultimately is.  Sure there are recipes I would never want to make, (calf’s tongue hash anyone?) but they are of a time.  And in fact, Gima’s forays into international cuisines seem advanced for the early days after World War II. 

Two of my favorite moments involve smoking and drinking.  While sharing the joy of bread making with her reader, Gima says, “Now relax.  Sit down, light a cigarette…” while we wait for the dough to rise.  After the appointed passage of time she says, “Is your cigarette finished?  Let’s go.  This is fun.”  I love that.  And although instructing anyone to smoke is a terrible idea, I appreciate her tone.  Same goes for her chapter on cocktails.  She acknowledges that although tending the household bar is usually a man’s job, “when the hostess lives alone and likes it…" "any halfway intelligent woman should be able to produce a drinkable cocktail...." I think that is incredibly modern thinking and obviously speaks to me personally.

But here's the catch. Although I really enjoyed reading At Home on the Range, the one recipe I tried was a disappointment.  You see, at the end of the book Elizabeth Gilbert has pulled some of the recipes from the narrative and “presented” them in today’s standard recipe format.  "Quick Tea Cookies" caught my eye since I am a tea drinker and they seemed easy and yielded only 8-10, no temptation hanging around the house.  But I needn't have worried about being tempted.  Okay, hot out of the oven and dipped in tea they weren't half bad.  But as my sister said in response to that statement after taking a bite an hour later and making a displeased face, "what isn't?"  So it looks like the fates were fair in this case--Ms. Gilbert's uber-skills are limited to one thing.  Or so I choose to believe.   But still, my cookies are better than hers and the next time I’m thinking of making some to go with my tea I’ll opt for my favorite Orange Sablés, sink into my favorite chair and read more about Gima. 

   

Pick One Quick Tea Cookies
from At Home on the Range, Elizabeth Gilbert, Margaret Yardley Potter 2012
Ingredients
1 Tablespoon brown sugar + extra for sprinkling
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg, well-beaten
1/2 cup flour, sifted
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch ground cinnamon
2 pinches ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon caraway seeds (optional)
8-10 walnut halves or almond slices (optional)

Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Grease a medium cookie sheet and set aside.

Using a hand-held mixer or elbow grease and a spoon, cream the brown sugar and butter together until smooth. 

Add the egg, flour, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Beat well until smooth.  If using caraway seeds, stir them in now.

Drop by rounded teaspoon or use small, two-teaspoon ice cream scoop, sprinkle each cookie with a pinch of brown sugar.  If desired, place a half-walnut or sliced blanched almond on top of each cookie before baking.

 

Bake for 8 minutes.  Cookies will be pale, puffy and cake-like.

New Job Quinoa Pudding

One of the best ways to avoid things that make you uncomfortable is not to do them.  Like in that old joke about the patient who says, “Doctor, it hurts when I turn my head like this,” the doctor’s response corroborates my theory, “then don’t turn your head like that.”  I will do almost anything to avoid certain feelings, like the “new girl,” first day of school jitters and “Sunday Night Feeling.”  So how have I been handling these anxieties endemic to office work?  By not looking back when I left my last big-girl career, many, many years ago.

In all fairness to myself, I was beyond burnt out and had been working non-stop since I’d gotten out of college.  I’d turned into someone I didn’t much like, which wasn’t an opinion held only by me.  Just ask my father and brother who enjoy imitating the way I used to take their calls; not “Hello!” but rather, “What!”  Pleasant, no?  When my last gig crashed and burned around me I took it as a sign that it was time to move on, reinvent, rediscover and reconnect with myself.  And here’s the thing.  The adjustment to not working couldn’t have been easier.  I have friends whose lines of work involve hiatuses (hiatae?) and they don’t know what to do with themselves during breaks that come with the promise of going back to the job in just a few weeks.  To me, having a nice chunk of time to reclaim oneself without the anxiety of starting something new, but with the knowledge that you’ll be making a living again in familiar surroundings, would be ideal.

When I was working full-time I wondered what people who didn’t did all day.  Now I wonder how I ever got anything done when I was employed.  You see, like all good things, my stretch of working from home and convincing myself that really, I could live without a regular income and write all day while looking out the window as the leaves changed over the months, er, years, had to come to an end.  The tax man waits for no one to finish writing a book she isn’t writing.

So, back into the job market I went.  And when I was offered a job that seemed to fit my bill in that 1) it wouldn’t cause me to scream “What?!” anytime my phone rang and 2) it was in line with my interest in food and writing, I was thrilled.  Until I realized I would be confronting the above mentioned anxieties.  When you work for yourself from home the only jitters you have are the few times when the wool you’ve pulled over your eyes slips and you remember that unless you start to make some money you will be homeless and how did you let this much time go by without a job and what’s going to happen to you and you used to have a corner office and now you wear exercise clothes all day and the only people you see at the gym at 10AM are retirees.

Obviously, I wasn’t living a completely stress-free existence.  But I was quite well-skilled in the art of denial and managed not to let little things like not being financially rewarded for a job well done get in my way of pretending everything was all good.  And the fact is I was redirecting my life.  I didn’t set out to change things up but found myself wanting to do things I hadn’t tried. Thinking about it now, it never occurred to me that I was being brave, but maybe I was.  Reality television has debased the use of the word “journey,” taking it from meaning a voyage or trip to implying a personal growth spurt.  But I think that’s kind of what happened to me. 

If only old habits were easier to break.  Just as I had played it safe by staying in my last job for so long that I never had Sunday night feeling and was far from the “new girl,” I got very comfortable in my routinized, unemployed life.  Probably in an attempt to place order on my unacknowledged psychic chaos, I developed a schedule and planned out every day.  It worked very well in making me feel like I was busy and in fact, I was.  Writing, baking, keeping my household ducks in a row, trying to be a good daughter, sister, aunt and friend, I never had so much as a minute of boredom.  Unlike my friends who freak out when they are on hiatus, I didn’t think twice.  Until I had to.










Last Sunday, before the Monday on which my current state of life was going to change,  I was preparing to face the anxiety trifecta of Sunday night/new girl/first day of school jitters.  I kept myself busy with my nieces during the day, making sure to get home in the late afternoon because I knew I’d want something comforting—“nursery food” as my father calls it—as my cozy sweet that night.  So I decided to make a healthier riff on a rice pudding, using quinoa and skim milk.  The constant stirring put me in a zen state and the warm scent of cinnamon was totally soothing.  But here’s the crazy thing.  I didn’t need to be calmed down.  I was really okay.  I got a good night sleep, didn’t have a pit in my stomach, made it to work on time and maintained my sense of self all day.  And then I thought, maybe the last too many years really were about a journey that helped unfurl my knotted head and gave me more strength than I’d given myself credit for.  Now I have a ton of quinoa pudding without needing to be tranquilized.  But luckily you don’t have to be a neurotic mess to appreciate a delicious, creamy treat, brought to life with spice and dried fruit.  I’ll be eating it every night this week, except Sunday.  I won’t need it.
 
New Job Quinoa Pudding
Adapted from Body & Soul, 2008
Printer Friendly Version
Ingredients
3/4 cup quinoa, rinsed
4 cups skim milk
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots 

Directions
In a large saucepan, bring quinoa and 3 cups milk to a boil.

 

Reduce to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, 12 to 14 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, whisk together sugar, honey, eggs, cinnamon, and remaining cup of milk. 









Reduce heat to medium-low. Stirring constantly, slowly pour egg mixture into quinoa; add raisins and apricots.

Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, 3 to 5 minutes. 



Pour pudding into a 2-quart dish and let cool slightly. Cover surface directly with plastic and refrigerate until cool, at least 2 hours and up to 2 days.