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I’ve never been one to enjoy hanging out with large groups of women. I feel completely separate from those members of my sex who like to travel in gaggles. I’m not entirely sure why I feel this way, especially since I had an all female secondary school education which was a largely positive experience. But I haven’t been part of a big gang of girls since I was twelve and wore the purple satin baseball jacket that was the uniform of The Seven Deadly Sins: my group of pals whose sins were all pretty minor.
But even as adults, why aren’t women more supportive of each other? All it takes is one look at any website that draws supposedly like minded women together to see how easily the talons come out, ready to tear at any sister who doesn’t agree with the views expressed by another. And let’s not even start with the workplace. I’ve worked for women and for men and frankly, I’ll take men any day. My best experiences were with male co-workers and partners. And no, I didn’t feel like I was treated “less than” because I was female. Okay sure, I doubt my boss would have assigned any of the guys the responsibility of ordering the Christmas wine we handed out to support staff every year but frankly, I knew I was better at tying the bows around the Mylar bags and writing out the gift cards.
Ever since I was in college I’ve had a mix of male and female friends and, with apologies to When Harry Met Sally, I firmly believe heterosexual members of the opposite sex can indeed be friends. In fact, I don’t trust a man who has no platonic women in his life. Of course there has to be respect for the romantic partners of both parties. Years ago I was dating a guy who had several close female friends. One of them liked to refer to him as “Jerry” and herself as “Elaine.” (If I have to explain that that is a Seinfeld reference you need an emergency crash course in pop culture). Every Sunday morning at 9:00am (yes, I’d slept over the night before) she would call his apartment and ask if he wanted to meet her for brunch at the place they’d always gone, to which she’d given another private-joke moniker. I was furious. And frankly, I was as mad at him for not making the boundaries clear as I was at her for assuming he was free as a bird on Sunday mornings. She ultimately got the hint (and fell off the face of the earth once she tied the knot herself) but you get my point. Where was the sisterhood?
When my guy friends have been in new relationships, and certainly when they’ve gotten married, I hope I have conducted myself appropriately and shown that I know my adjusted place. I am also very lucky in that these friends are married to women I like so much we have relationships that are independent from their husbands. When we all get together for dinner the conversation is inter-sex; there is very little splintering off for ‘girl-talk’ and thank goodness for that. I find it so depressing when you look at the other tables in restaurants and the men are guffawing only with each other while the women have arranged their chairs in a little cluster.
I should make it clear that I have plenty of wonderful female friends. I see them regularly and I love each one for different reasons. Many know each other and we’ve had dinner in small groups of three, four tops. But I’ve always thought there was something so forced about a “girls’ night” whether spent out or in. My social life is not a collection of Sex and the City moments with four different ‘types’ swilling identical brightly-colored cocktails and talking explicitly about private moments with men—it’s not now and it never was, even before everyone got married and their private moments became truly private.
And here’s where my anti-gaggle stance gets a little funny. Some nights when I’m tossing and turning I put on the TV to help me get out of my head. Wouldn’t you know, my visual lullaby is The Golden Girls. You might even call them a golden gaggle. There are four of them, each one is a type, they never stop talking and I couldn’t find them more comforting. Even before the recent surge in Betty White fandom I loved ditsy Rose, saucy Blanche, tactless Sophia and of course brassy Dorothy. But the thing is they are really friends and totally have each other’s back. There’s no mean-girl behavior, no one upmanship. Talk about girl power. And I’ve always thought their life seemed kind of appealing: living with close friends (and your mother) in a sunny climate, reading magazines on the rattan couch, wearing a pastel printed nylon bathrobe. Sign me up. In 30 years. From the first strains of “Thank you for Being a Friend” I’m transported to more than a few Saturday nights back in the 80’s, curled up on the couch laughing with my sister and craving cheesecake. There was no problem a piece of cheesecake couldn’t solve for that Miami based quartet and when I tune into a rerun (between WE and the Hallmark channel I could watch 10 episodes a day if I wanted to. Poor Betty White must spend an awful lot of time driving to the bank with her fistfuls of residual checks.) it always seems to be the exact moment when Rose is setting the cake down on their kitchen table. Having an entire cheesecake in the fridge would be dangerous for someone who lives without her two best friends and her mother, so these little one-bite treats are perfect for those I-just-need-a-taste moments. But I’m happy to share them with my friends, the boys and the girls.
Golden Girls and Boys One Bite Cheesecakes
Adapted from Giada DeLaurentiis, Food Network
Printer Friendly Version
Ingredients1 cup crushed chocolate wafer crumbs (from about 15 wafers)
6 Tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup ricotta cheese (for lower fat try part-skim)
4 ounces cream cheese (for lower fat try Neufchatel)
1/2 cup sugar plus 4 Tablespoons, divided
2 oranges, zested
2 eggs
cooking spray
Directions
Preheat oven to 350, spray mini-muffin pan with cooking spray, put a kettle of water to boil.
In a medium bowl, combine cookie crumbs and butter until fully incorporated.
Place one teaspoon of crumb mixture into each muffin cup and press down firmly.
Bake chocolate crust for 3 minutes and let cool on wire rack.
Meanwhile, in bowl of food processor combine ricotta cheese, cream cheese, 1/2 cup sugar, zest of one orange and 2 eggs. Process until smooth.
Place 1 tablespoon or a bit more to fill each muffin cup almost to the top.
Place mini muffin tin into a larger baking pan and place in oven. Before closing oven door, pour hot water into large baking dish filling the dish with enough water to come halfway up the sides of mini muffin tin.
Bake 25 minutes.
Cool muffin tin on wire rack for 30 minutes.
Place cooled tin in refrigerator for at least 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix 4 tablespoons of sugar and zest of one orange in small bowl.
Remove muffin tin from fridge and pry each mini cheesecake out of muffin cups with small knife.
Before serving top each cheesecake with about 1/4 teaspoon of orange/sugar mixture.
Yield: 24 mini cheesecakes
It is hard to explain the place food shopping has in the hearts of most New Yorkers. It is both a loathsome, frustrating experience and a wholly satisfying one due to the incredible offerings at some of the more inventive markets. And so it was with great anticipation that my neighborhood welcomed the opening of our first Trader Joe’s. What followed for me was yet another love-hate relationship with a food emporium (as opposed to The Food Emporium which is 100% hate).
When I was a child nothing thrilled me more than a trip to a suburban grocery store. An overnight visit to my grandmother’s in Great Neck meant accompanying her on her weekly stock-up at Waldbaum’s. What a treat—roaming undisturbed in the wide aisles, the Brach’s Pick-A-Mix kiosk (where she forced me into a life of crime by encouraging me to swipe those Neopolitan coconut caramels and shove them into my mouth before check-out), loading up on No-Cal raspberry soda—it was a little piece of heaven. But then I spent a summer in LA and Ralph’s made Waldbaum’s seem like a corner bodega. It was huge, sunny (of course) filled to the rafters with every product I’d seen on television but somehow never found on the shelves of our edited urban market, and to my mother’s delight, it sold wine!
What a contrast to the endless meanderings to specialty food stores city shopping meant at the time: she had to hit the regular market, the fish store, the butcher, the liquor store, etc. all while steering a stroller through aisles that barely accommodated a shopping cart. Plus she had to beat the clock to make sure she got home before the supermarket delivery guy showed up. How stressful.
Shopping in the city can be treacherous business. With narrow aisles, nerves frayed by crowds and the general hostility of the average New Yorker the supermarket becomes a take-no-prisoners arena. And I’m as guilty as the next shopper. Lucky for me I’m only buying for one and can get away with just a hand-basket, weaving my way through the masses contemplating strawberry vs. raspberry jam or sampling olives when they think no one is looking. But Lord help the shopper who gets in my way. “Sorry!” I lie as I (oops) knock my basket into their back just for a little move-it-along encouragement.
I happen to live in an area that has always made a big deal about food—Whole Foods, Gourmet Garage, The Food Emporium, Zabars, Citarella and Fairway are all in walking distance from my apartment. For selection and prices Fairway (which started out more produce focused but is now a full grocery store complete with an amazing cheese selection, bakery, coffee, organic and house brands) is where I spend most of my food budget. However, you literally take your life into your own hands when you enter and I have the black and blue marks on my calves to prove it. Sure some of the bruises come from distracted old ladies accidentally crashing into me but I’ve also borne my share of premeditated attacks. Like the time a man dressed as a Dickensian child catcher waited for me by the exit and kicked me in the shin just as I walked out the door. It’s true. Because of the reasons detailed above the store is always crowded, always hostile, and the help is always surly. But as in most love-hate relationships, I continually go back for more.
And so, when the neighborhood got wind that Trader Joe’s was opening in the middle of the two-mile corridor bookended by two Whole Foods, expectations were high. “Oh, I can’t wait for the pot stickers!” said my friend Marsha. Amy was excited about the peanut butter filled pretzels while Anne raved about the lunch options for kids. Having been to one of their stores in the ‘burbs, I was just looking forward to the great prices on baking products, nuts, chocolate etc.
I made my virgin voyage to the 72nd Street Trader Joe’s last Tuesday and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The space is horrendous—it is entirely subterranean going two stories underground and lit only by the glare of the florescent fixtures that are as flattering as the bad-mood lighting of the DMV. Everything looks picked over and messy, as if raccoons had been let loose in the store. The customers have no idea where they are going, so there is this sense of vagueness coupled with anxiety which seems to force the shoppers, and their carts, to stop suddenly in an aisle, look up helplessly for a non-existent sign while a four wagon pile-up forms behind them. I was desperate to find an exit sign. Gasping on the sidewalk for breath I vowed never to return.
That was until I made my opinion public; I was chastised by every friend who had sucked it up, stayed the course and come home with pistachio chocolate bark and the “perfect baguette.” And when my friend Chris reported they carried mini peanut butter cups, just a bit bigger than a chocolate chip, my baking imagination took hold and I re-visited the store on Friday night at the relatively peaceful hour of 9pm. (Oh, I’m sorry, were you busy painting the town red while I was grocery shopping on a Friday night?) Despite the lack of signage I found what I was looking for and yes, it was much less chaotic. Although the lighting still cast a yellow shadow over everything and everyone giving the whole place a kind of Night of the Living Dead vibe.
But really, how could I decide anything until I’d baked with one of their offerings? After a quick consult with my peanut butter and chocolate loving sister, I settled on a cocoa cookie using my box of Trader Joe’s Mini Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups in place of a conventional chip. They are soft and slightly cakey with surprises of oozy, salty peanut butter and gooey milk chocolate—perfect for the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup fan in your life. I should add that I handled myself very politely at the store and did not inflict any physical harm on the other customers. So these cookies have me feeling the Trader Joe’s love. For now.
Welcome to the Neighborhood Trader Joe's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup CookiesPrinter Friendly Version
Adapted from Nestle's Very Best Baking
Ingredients
2 cups flour
2/3 cup cocoa (not Dutch processed)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 12 oz box Trader Joe's Milk Chocolate Mini Peanut Butter Cups (if not available you can substitute two cups of peanut butter chips or chocolate & peanut butter swirled chips or Reeses pieces)
Directions
Preheat oven to 325 and line two baking sheets with parchment paper
In a medium bowl whisk, flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt to combine
In bowl of electric mixer cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy on medium speed, about 3 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl and add eggs one at a time beating to combine. Add vanilla and beat briefly to combine.
On low speed gradually add flour until fully incorporated.
Remove bowl from mixer and stir in peanut butter cups until distributed evenly.
Drop by rounded teaspoons or use small (2 teaspoon) ice cream scoop onto cookie sheets.
Bake for 9-11 minutes until the middle of the cookies puff and look set.
Cool on sheets for two minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
NOTE: These cookies can be fragile. Follow cooling instructions or you'll wind up with a mess of broken cookies.
Yield 6 1/2 dozen cookies
There is a lot I love about fall—good hair weather, changing leaves, chunky sweaters, trading open toes for boots. But there is a dirty little secret that I have harbored since I was a child: one of my favorite things about fall is the new TV season. I’ve made it clear that during my formative years my desired television viewing habits remained only desired. And I’ve also mentioned the irony (hypocrisy?) behind the strict “idiot box” policies that were enforced by my parents; my father was a creative director at an ad agency (yes, he had Don Draper’s job) and TV commercials kept a roof over our head.
In spite of (or perhaps because of) the dictatorship run by the people who kept our color television under the lock and key of their bedroom, I only wanted to spend my evenings in TV’s thrall. Their rules didn’t nurture a yearning to curl up with Tom Sawyer, Jane Eyre or Moll Flanders (or God forbid, my homework) but rather, with the Bradys, the Angels or the Carringtons. And so, just as buying a new pencil case put a little spring in my step, so did the unveiling of the signature theme songs each network used to usher in the new season's line-up. The really sad thing is that I actually remember a few of them (“Now is the Time, ABC is the Place!” Fall 1981 anyone?). I am truly curious as to what was going on in my brain at the time that made escaping into the black box more appealing than staying on the reality side of the screen. Although, thinking about anyone’s life at 15 it isn’t really that hard to figure out.
Here is where things get even more ironic: the automotive industry was the entire reason why the networks' season began in September in the first place and my father spent 30 years working on car accounts. According to my source, (you-know-who) back in the day (it still may be true) car companies were the biggest advertisers on television. New cars were rolled out in September and it followed that that would be when their ad needs were greatest, so let’s bring on the new shows. What’s also interesting (to me) is that the idea of January (mid-season) replacement shows was tied into the re-launches of the car models that had been introduced the previous September. Get it? The whole model was shaken up by the foreign car companies and their foreign schedules and the explosion of cable so none of this really applies to either business at this point. But old habits die hard in TV land and so, “Now is the Time [and my TV] is the Place!”
Of course, because I am a theater geek in princess clothing I am very happy to welcome back Glee. I’ve been watching since day one and recommend it to anyone, whether or not you are in high school or care about musical theater. Then there is 30 Rock because Alec Baldwin is brilliant, Private Practice because Tim Daly is Tim Daly, The Good Wife because I’m obsessed with Julianna Margulies’ eyebrows and Modern Family because everyone says it’s great and I have yet to watch it. I’m also watching Running Wilde, co-created and starring my hilarious friend Will Arnett (shameless plug for friend, sorry), plus I’m in the middle of Mad Men and easing into Top Chef: Just Desserts. As you can see, I am very busy.
Speaking of busy, keeping my hands occupied while watching all of this is a constant challenge. I don’t know about you but I have a very hard time staring at a screen with my hands resting by my side. At the movies I’m always nibbling on something and that happens at home too. The reason I took up knitting 10 years ago was so I could do something productive while watching TV, other than stuffing my face. And that tactic worked for awhile. Basically, I learned one sweater pattern and one hat pattern and I knitted them for the babies in my life. But there were two problems; first, yarn is a lot more expensive than a bag of chips and second, the babies grew. As their size went up my bank account went down. So now I’m back to eating.
I do my best to time my dinner to the show du nuit but the network programmers aren’t always taking my dining schedule into consideration. At 10pm I find myself empty handed, or to paraphrase Estelle Costanza again, “sitting there like an idiot without a piece of cake” and sometimes I’m not in the mood for cake. Actually, that’s not true. I always want cake. I just don’t want to look like someone who always eats cake. Really, I’m usually hankering after a little combo of salty and sweet and when I saw this recipe in the September issue of Bon Appetit I was intrigued. Caramel corn, cashews and….bacon? This I had to try.
Oh no, it is really good. Don’t be too freaked by the bacon (or Fakin if you’re a vegetarian), it just gives a little smokiness to this salty, sweet, spicy, crunchy, perfect grown-up version of Cracker Jacks. Now I have a new problem—I’m going to look like someone who ate 15 cups of snack mix. Maybe I should have stuck to cake. Or maybe I should go back to knitting. Anyone having a baby?
Note: Personally, I don't see the point of the tea in this recipe. I think you could just go with warmed cream, sans tea. Also, use your favorite nut if cashews aren't your thing. And forgo the bacon too if it freaks you out. The nuts, popcorn and caramel would be delicious even without the addition of a smoky meat.
TV Time Nutty Spicy Caramel Popcorn
from Bon Appetit, September 2010
Printer Friendly Version
Ingredients
1/2 cup popcorn kernels
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 ounces bacon, chopped
1/2 cup unsalted raw cashews (one 2.5-ounce package)
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt or coarse sea salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1 oolong tea bag
Nonstick vegetable oil spray
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
Directions
Preheat oven to 300°F.
Heat popcorn and oil in covered heavy large pot over medium-high heat until kernels begin to pop. Using oven mitts, hold lid on pot andshake pot until popping stops. Pour popcorn into very large bowl.
Cook bacon in heavy large skillet over medium heat until almost crisp. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain; cool and chop into small pieces.
Add bacon and cashews to bowl with popcorn. Sprinkle with coarse salt and cayenne; toss to coat.
Bring cream and tea bag just to boil over medium heat. Remove from heat; let steep 15 minutes, occasionally pressing on tea bag with back of spoon to release flavor. (I poured my mixture into a mug for a better steep.) Discard tea bag.
Line rimmed baking sheet with foil; coat with nonstick spray. Coat 2 wooden spoons or heat-resistant spatulas with nonstick spray; set aside.
Stir sugar, 1/4 cup water, and corn syrup in large saucepan over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to high; boil without stirring until syrup turns deep amber, occasionally swirling pan and brushing down sides with wet pastry brush, about 9-13 minutes.
Remove from heat and immediately add cream (mixture will bubble up). Stir until blended.
Immediately drizzle caramel over popcorn mixture; toss with sprayed spoons until evenly coated. Transfer to sheet.
Place caramel corn in oven and bake until caramel is shiny and coats popcorn, tossing mixture occasionally, about 20 minutes.
Cool completely on sheet on rack, tossing occasionally to break up large clumps.
Yield: 15 cups
I’ve never been one to enjoy hanging out with large groups of women. I feel completely separate from those members of my sex who like to travel in gaggles. I’m not entirely sure why I feel this way, especially since I had an all female secondary school education which was a largely positive experience. But I haven’t been part of a big gang of girls since I was twelve and wore the purple satin baseball jacket that was the uniform of The Seven Deadly Sins: my group of pals whose sins were all pretty minor.
But even as adults, why aren’t women more supportive of each other? All it takes is one look at any website that draws supposedly like minded women together to see how easily the talons come out, ready to tear at any sister who doesn’t agree with the views expressed by another. And let’s not even start with the workplace. I’ve worked for women and for men and frankly, I’ll take men any day. My best experiences were with male co-workers and partners. And no, I didn’t feel like I was treated “less than” because I was female. Okay sure, I doubt my boss would have assigned any of the guys the responsibility of ordering the Christmas wine we handed out to support staff every year but frankly, I knew I was better at tying the bows around the Mylar bags and writing out the gift cards.
Ever since I was in college I’ve had a mix of male and female friends and, with apologies to When Harry Met Sally, I firmly believe heterosexual members of the opposite sex can indeed be friends. In fact, I don’t trust a man who has no platonic women in his life. Of course there has to be respect for the romantic partners of both parties. Years ago I was dating a guy who had several close female friends. One of them liked to refer to him as “Jerry” and herself as “Elaine.” (If I have to explain that that is a Seinfeld reference you need an emergency crash course in pop culture). Every Sunday morning at 9:00am (yes, I’d slept over the night before) she would call his apartment and ask if he wanted to meet her for brunch at the place they’d always gone, to which she’d given another private-joke moniker. I was furious. And frankly, I was as mad at him for not making the boundaries clear as I was at her for assuming he was free as a bird on Sunday mornings. She ultimately got the hint (and fell off the face of the earth once she tied the knot herself) but you get my point. Where was the sisterhood?
When my guy friends have been in new relationships, and certainly when they’ve gotten married, I hope I have conducted myself appropriately and shown that I know my adjusted place. I am also very lucky in that these friends are married to women I like so much we have relationships that are independent from their husbands. When we all get together for dinner the conversation is inter-sex; there is very little splintering off for ‘girl-talk’ and thank goodness for that. I find it so depressing when you look at the other tables in restaurants and the men are guffawing only with each other while the women have arranged their chairs in a little cluster.
And here’s where my anti-gaggle stance gets a little funny. Some nights when I’m tossing and turning I put on the TV to help me get out of my head. Wouldn’t you know, my visual lullaby is The Golden Girls. You might even call them a golden gaggle. There are four of them, each one is a type, they never stop talking and I couldn’t find them more comforting. Even before the recent surge in Betty White fandom I loved ditsy Rose, saucy Blanche, tactless Sophia and of course brassy Dorothy. But the thing is they are really friends and totally have each other’s back. There’s no mean-girl behavior, no one upmanship. Talk about girl power. And I’ve always thought their life seemed kind of appealing: living with close friends (and your mother) in a sunny climate, reading magazines on the rattan couch, wearing a pastel printed nylon bathrobe. Sign me up. In 30 years. From the first strains of “Thank you for Being a Friend” I’m transported to more than a few Saturday nights back in the 80’s, curled up on the couch laughing with my sister and craving cheesecake. There was no problem a piece of cheesecake couldn’t solve for that Miami based quartet and when I tune into a rerun (between WE and the Hallmark channel I could watch 10 episodes a day if I wanted to. Poor Betty White must spend an awful lot of time driving to the bank with her fistfuls of residual checks.) it always seems to be the exact moment when Rose is setting the cake down on their kitchen table. Having an entire cheesecake in the fridge would be dangerous for someone who lives without her two best friends and her mother, so these little one-bite treats are perfect for those I-just-need-a-taste moments. But I’m happy to share them with my friends, the boys and the girls.
Golden Girls and Boys One Bite Cheesecakes
Ingredients
Place one teaspoon of crumb mixture into each muffin cup and press down firmly.
Meanwhile, in bowl of food processor combine ricotta cheese, cream cheese, 1/2 cup sugar, zest of one orange and 2 eggs. Process until smooth.
Place 1 tablespoon or a bit more to fill each muffin cup almost to the top.
Bake 25 minutes.
Place cooled tin in refrigerator for at least 15 minutes.
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