Music and Cats

Very early this morning, I listed the ingredients for the three chocolate desserts served at our party yesterday. It should not surprise those who have read parts I and II of the Music and Cats ‘Let Them Eat Cake’ series to learn that all three of the mystery recipes are taken from the pages of Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts.

Mystery Recipe #1: Many people do not think of pepper when they think of chocolate. Central Americans have have been combining chocolate, cinnamon and pepper for centuries, to great effect, as in these Mexican Chocolate Icebox Cookies.

Mystery Recipe #2: The prize goes to Wavybrains, who correctly pegged these as brownies. They are Ginger Brownies, a variant on Heatter’s Black Pepper Brownies.

Mystery Recipe #3: Paula guessed correctly! These four ingredients are all that you need for Chocolate Mousse Heatter.

Recipes below. (more…)

Our party was - if I do say so myself - a success. It seems that a good time was had by all, and certainly by Paul and me. Over the course of the afternoon, we had about 25 people in the house, 20% of whom were under the age of eight. Sasha and Sergei retreated to the upstairs; Sergei hid so well that, for a while, I thought perhaps he’d gotten out of the house. Lyra (aka Princess Affection Sponge) decided that all these people were here to pay attention to her… and as she is beautiful, soft and sweet, most folks were willing to oblige.

Our friends fortunately did a fine job of consuming the chocolate treats over which I labored for a number of hours this weekend. (I say fortunately because I did not want leftover chocolate treats around the house.) I was going to write about said treats, their recipes, procedures and pitfalls, but I’m just too tired. However, as a teaser, here are the ingredient lists for the three chocolate treats served at the party.

Mystery Recipe #1:
3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 sticks unsalted butter
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups sugar
2 eggs

Mystery Recipe #2:
6 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2 1/4 sticks unsalted butter
1 1/2 teaspoon dry instant espresso
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 7/8 cup brown sugar
5 eggs, large
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour, sifted
1 cup crystallized ginger

Mystery Recipe #3:
1 pound semisweet chocolate
2 tablespoons dry instant espresso
2/3 cup boiling water
10 eggs, separated

Can you tell me for what recipes these are the ingredients? Anyone?

I’ll provide the names of and instructions for these recipes tomorrow. Now, to sleep.

p.s. Thanks to all who left well wishes in the comments of my last post. Paul and I both appreciated them.

At this time, one year ago today, my husband Paul had already been in surgery for two hours. He would be in surgery for ten more.

At this time, one year ago today, I was sitting in the surgical waiting room at the University of Washington Medical Center. As places to spend a day worrying go, the UW waiting room was quite nice. It’s a lovely room, located on a corner of the building, with full height windows providing southerly views onto gardens, trees and the ship channel beyond. Soft chairs and love seats are arranged in conversational areas, tables with chairs provide a place to eat or write. A long work surface with data ports provides internet access, and there’?s a large desk on which sits the all-important telephone connecting the room to the operating rooms. I was the first person there, so I had my choice of location. I picked a spot near the corner of the two window walls, from which I could see both the gardens and the door.

At this time, one year ago today, I had already sent a short blog post out to our friends and family. This is what it said:

After weeks of actively gathering information and making choices about Paul’s treatment, we’ve reached the point where, at least for today, it’s out of our hands. This experience feels like an amusement park we didn’t choose to visit. The past few weeks were the bumper cars; we could make decisions, and try to choose a direction, but we never knew when or from where the next jolt was coming. And now we’ve gotten on the roller coaster. We’re strapped in, and heading up that first long incline. Clack, clack, clack. Once we reach the top, gravity takes over. We can decide whether to scream or laugh, hold our hands up in the air or hang on for dear life. Clack, clack, clack…

At this time, one year ago today, I sat alone, sipping a latte, waiting for my parents and friends to arrive and keep me company through the rest of a very long day.

At this time, today, one year later, I sit at my computer, sipping the latte that Paul just brought me. Paul is in our bedroom, reading the Sunday NY Times. I can hear him talking to one of our cats. He is - knock on wood, god willing and every other cliched, hopeful, superstitious phrase one might use here - free of cancer. He is still adjusting to the persistent, and perhaps permanent, effects of the surgery on his body. Things are a little better every day.

In a few hours, one year later, we’re having a party. Although my parents won’t be here, a number of the friends who sat with me last year will be. On that day, they brought me chocolate; this year, I am baking chocolate treats for them.

Most importantly, one year later, Paul is still here, and will be by my side when our friends arrive to celebrate that with us.

Our cats live in a house in which they outnumber the people. They are shy of strangers, and easily startled by unexpected company. If you keep going, there’s a poetry reading, music playing, food and conversation.

If you’d like to visit the cats, please come in quietly, so that they won’t run hide under the bed.

Lyra is from abuse and neglect, and a wound that looked like a cigarette burn and took two months to heal. She is from struggling when held and fear of men with beards. She is from a foster home with kind children and a mother cat with kittens. She wandered around our house that first day crying for the kittens, and catching the scent of our recently dead cat. I cried with her, still missing my kitten of 19 years. Soon after, we brought home Sasha and Segei, orphaned kittens who attached to her with a vengeance. She hasn’t cried for kittens since. She no longer fears my husband’s beard. She still does not like to be held.

Sasha

Sergei

Under the bed, McKittens…

This is dedicated to Michele, for giving Norman a kitty mascot, and to the folks from cutekitty.com who left all those nice comment votes.

The first time I was in Seattle, I fell in love with a place. Not with the city as a whole, but a particular spot in the city. This is the way that love happens, I believe; we fall for details, for characteristics, either one at a time, slowly, or in such a huge rush that it seems we are falling for the entirety of person, place or thing.

On my first visit to Seattle, I fell in love with Kerry Park, a small urban park on the south slope of the hill where I now live. Certainly the view - a view captured in countless tourist snapshots, local advertisements, and TV news stand-ups - is breathtaking. It encompasses the skyline at its best angle, Space Needle front and center, and a sweep of Elliott Bay from the docks out to the nearby islands. And on clear days, Mount Rainier is visible, either starkly cut against the bluest skies you’ve ever seen, or shimmering ghostlike, as it was yesterday morning. Oh yes, it is a view for waxing rhapsodic, for sitting and staring and contemplating.

But for me, this place is not just about the view. The view is only one side of the place. The park is surrounded on its other sides by several of the grand houses and old-fashioned brick apartment buildings that make up one of Seattle’s oldest neighborhoods. I am an architect, daughter of an architect, granddaughter of a builder. Buildings are in my blood, are part of my earliest memories. Houses and housing are for me both life blood and my life’s work. What I fell in love with at Kerry Park was a house.

The Black House, designed by Seattle architect Andrew Willatsen, was built in 1914. Willatsen was an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Wrightian influence is evident in the house’s horizontal lines, bands of windows and deeply overhanging roof. The rows of boxwoods along the terraced front yard of the house reinforce the horizontality of the design. If I were putting together a case study on buildings as perfect backdrops, the Black House would be on my list. Spare and elegant, the design says to me Yes, I am here. I am a part of this hill, this neighborhood, this city. But look! Turn around and look out at this amazing view with me.

When I saw the ‘For Sale’ sign in front of the Black House a couple of years ago, I was covetous. Oh, to be the caretaker of that gorgeous house, to live in that place, to have that glorious view. The house did not sell for months, but eventually the sign came down. I was envious of the people who had the financial wherewithal to buy a part of one of Seattle’s landmarks.

Sadly, the new owners appreciated only the view, and not the place of which their house was a part. Just over a year ago, they had the beautiful 90-year-old house that they had just purchased demolished. They did so as stealthily as possible, acquiring the demolition permit during the week between Christmas and New Years. The demolition crew told passersby early in the day that they were doing maintenance work. There was no attempt made to salvage any of the materials from the house.

It has been 14 months since the Black House was demolished. While the owner of the property stated that he intended to build a new house, there has been no application for a building permit, no sign of any activity on the property. I can’t imagine that, should he build, his new neighbors will be welcoming. There is a chain link fence around the old foundation. There is a ragged hole torn in the fabric of this place. I cannot imagine how it might be mended.

Not every old house is worth saving. Some old buildings are ugly, are poorly built, are culturally worthless. Some buildings, however, have value above and beyond their worth as property. The Black House was one such building. Kerry Park is not the same without it.

Note: I’ve attached an article from the Seattle PI regarding the demolition of the Black House. Click to read: (more…)