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Salty Dog

#290: Salty Dog, with Trout Barquettes

The Select-O-Matic says:

#290: Salty Dog, with Trout Barquettes

A Salty Dog is just a Greyhound with a salted rim, and a Greyhound is just vodka with grapefruit juice. Salty Dogs are my go-to in venues where I have reason to think the juice will be good, but the drinks won’t, which means I order them approximately never. It’s just as well, as this exercise has reminded me that it’s really just a rather dull drink, even with freshly-squeezed juice.

Salty Dog

1-1/2 oz vodka

grapefruit juice

salt

Moisten rim of glass and dip in salt, fill glass with ice, add vodka, fill with grapefruit juice, stir.

Barquettes are a style of French pastry cup, so called because they are shaped like little boats (a barque is a sort of ship). You will note that neither the pastry cups in the recipe card photo nor in my photo are boat shaped. This is because that is a pain in the ass, and no one is going to go out and buy little boat-shaped tins for this when a mini-tart pan works just fine.

Trout Barquettes

canned trout fillets (Trader Joe’s canned trout, looks like a sardine tin)

barquette shells (Pillsbury pre-made pie crusts)

tarragon aspic

black caviar

sour cream

Cut trout fillets to fit in the cups, pat dry with paper towels. Top with semi-jelled tarragon aspic, chill until set. Top with a dollop of sour cream, rim with caviar.

Tarragon Aspic

1 cup clam juice

3/4 cup white wine

2 tbsp tarragon

1 envelope gelatin

Bring clam juice, 1/2 cup of wine and tarragon to a boil in a saucepan, then reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes. Sprinkle gelatin over remaining 1/4 cup of wine to soften, then stir into the clam juice. Remove tarragon leaves and chill.

This tastes about as good as it sounds, which is to say, not particularly. It wasn’t as awful as I’d feared, but it was not a hit with me or anyone else. Rich called it “a face-full of fish” and spit it out. If I were to try to make a tastier variation, I’d use fresh or frozen fish instead of canned, and I’d cut way back on the caviar by just putting a little on top of the sour cream instead of ringing the whole danged thing with the stuff. But let’s just not ever make it again.

Between the Sheets

#210: Between the Sheets, with Pere Ripiene

The Select-O-Matic says:

#210: Between the Sheets, with Pere Ripiene

If you like to think that the Universe plops down little signs that one is on the right track, here you go: Between the Sheets. This could not be more in keeping with what I like, and specifically what I like about this recipe card set. My favorite classic cocktail is the Sidecar, and my favorite spirit is rum. Between the Sheets brings those two things together, with an “Oh, Seventies, what are we going to do with you?” name. While the name seems to scream “Hey baby, what’s your sign?,” it actually dates back to at least the ’30s, when the drink appeared in the Savoy Cocktail Book. (Further reading: Erik Ellestad’s Savoy Stomp take, Kaiser Penguin’s Between the Sheets recipe comparison)

Between the Sheets
1/2 jigger brandy (Hardy VSOP Cognac)

1/2 jigger light rum (Mount Gay Eclipse Silver)

1/2 jigger Cointreau

1/3 jigger lemon juice

Shake & strain into a cocktail glass, garnish with lemon wedge.

I skipped the garnish, because I am a naughty little minx. In addition to the Mount Gay Eclipse Silver, I tried making this with Banks rum. While Banks is a rum I enjoy, it brought too much funk; I’d stick with a straightforward silver rum. Of course I like it. It’s a Sidecar with a bit of rum. I wasn’t going to not like it.

Pere Ripiene (Cheese-Stuffed Pears)

12 small Seckel pears (Comice)

2 tbsp lemon juice

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1 c Gorgonzola cheese

1 c crushed walnuts

Peel pears, cut in half lengthwise, remove seedy guts. Blend butter & cheese together until creamy, spoon into pear halves. Place pear halves together, and cover with crushed walnuts.

This was good! Really quick to throw together. I learned that the way to check the ripeness of a pear is to press your thumb into the neck, right against the stem. I wouldn’t know a Seckel pear if it bit me in the rear, so I went with Comice. I ground up the walnuts in a coffee grinder. I liked this quite a bit. Rich doesn’t dig Gorgonzola, and this was not the magical dish that converted him. I liked it enough to save it in Cookooree. While we didn’t agree on the tastiness of the pears, we did both agree that the pairing with the drink was a good one.

The 2 in 1 International Recipe Card Collection

The 2 in 1 International Recipe Card Collection for Mixed Drinks and Hors d'Oeuvre

Here’s a thing that has my attention lately: The 2 in 1 International Recipe Card Collection for Mixed Drinks and Hors d’Oeuvre, which was published by Random House in 1977, with Michael Dorn (not that one) credited as author. It’s a set of 300+ recipe cards, each one with recipes for a cocktail and a paired hors d’oeuvre, with full-color photographs.

I learned about it from my friend Rochelle, who recently bought a bar & restaurant in our neighborhood, Doctor’s Lounge, with her partner David. They plan to use the cards to decorate the men’s room walls. When she showed it to us over brunch a few weeks ago, I fell in love instantly.

It could not be more of its time; it is the Regal Beagle in a box. It’s a perfect Technicolor snapshot of how things were changing, cocktail-wise, in the ’70s. A great example is the recipe for the Clover Club cocktail: that it’s here at all is a pleasant surprise, and the recipe looks right… but what’s that floating in it? Is that a… no, it couldn’t be. A green cherry. Oh, dear. On the whole, the set seems to fall more frequently on the good side. Naturally the first recipe card I checked was for the Mai Tai, and it is spot on, right down to the credit given to Trader Vic. The paired hors d’oeuvre have all the charm of midcentury appetizers, only they look more edible. Sold! I had to have it, and thanks to eBay I’ve got one of my very own.

The first conversation that I ever had with Rich, beyond “nice to meet you,” was about his Joy of Cooking project. Our first date was a double date with Erik Ellestad and his wife Michele; Rich’s Joy of Cooking project was a major inspiration for Erik’s now-famous Stomping Through the Savoy project. I briefly dabbled with making all of the salads in the Marysville United Methodist Women 1979 Church Cookbook, but mixing lime Jell-O with things like canned corned beef, cream cheese, asparagus and horseradish is just too gross to be sustained for the long haul. Maybe this could be my project?

The Trotts love a system, and here’s mine: I’ve whipped up a little Ruby program, which I’m calling the Select-O-Matic until I come up with something better, that keeps track of which cards I’ve already made and randomly selects one for me to tackle next. If I’m not in the mood for what the Select-O-Matic has suggested, it’ll pick another one until I settle on one I like. If I want to select a card on my own, it’ll keep track of those, too.

This recipe card set needs a better shorthand name, though, because “The 2 in 1 International Recipe Card Collection for Mixed Drinks and Hors d’Oeuvre” is downright terrible. Suggestions?

The Expansion Plan

Hey, loved ones, you look like you would enjoy an update from Trottomatic.

So, we’re working on adding another Trott. Two Trotts is an awful lot of fun, and we figure three would be a kick. And can you imagine what a darling, spazzy, gangly little creature we could create? We can’t either, so we’re gonna make one and see what we get.

Or rather, we hope to make one. We’ve been trying for a bit more than a year, and we’ve been Really Quite Seriously Trying for about 10 months of that. Daily temperature taking, graphs, the whole nine yards. It’s been slow, and obviously… unproductive. We first started working with our lovely primary care physician oh, nearly a year ago. We got bumped up to the infertility big leagues this past spring, and have been working with a really wonderful OB/GYN, whom I adore.

I’ve gotten pretty darned acquainted with my inner equipment. Between my own daily tracking and the slew of diagnostics, the data says I should be an OB’s dream. Periods are like clockwork, always have been. Ovulation is similarly Germanic in its precision, with temperature bumps associated with convenient mittelschmerz and spotting confirmation. Uterine lining is nice and cushy (“luscious!” per my OB). Progesterone levels are totally baby-friendly (“gorgeous!” again says beloved OB). Ovarian follicles are plentiful (ultrasound tech says I “have the ovaries of a woman ten years younger!”). Morphologically speaking, my uterus looks right out of a textbook, a nice uterus-y shape, no signs of endometriosis. Rich also passed his tests swimmingly (BAH DUM BUM!).

This is all well and good, and nice to see and hear, except for that it paints a picture of a woman who really should be pregnant right now, and I’m not. Based on the tweaks, twinges, temperatures and tests, our best guess is that everything is working right up to or around implantation. We’ve definitely had some near misses, including one confirmed pregnancy that didn’t quite stick.

One itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, 7mm possible culprit is an endometrial polyp found smack dab in the middle of my uterus. Studies between small polyps and infertility have been inconclusive, but anecdotally, some people have had luck getting pregnant after having small polyps removed. (Also, my periods have been gradually becoming more painful, and the polyp is a likely contributor.)

So that’s our next step. I’m going in for surgery next Tuesday. If that doesn’t do the trick, next round is fertility drugs.

Infertility is a funny thing. It’s a nearly universal experience, yet pretty underrepresented when we connect with our friends and loved ones through conversation. There are a lot of factors there, I suppose. For me, the experience of having people ask “so, what’s new?” on the same day I had a miscarriage, and my replying “oh, nothing really!” just amplified the surreality of what was going on, in a way that was deeply unpleasant. These were people I loved, some of our dearest friends, and I felt like I was lying to them. And heck! I’d had a miscarriage, but it also meant I had been pregnant! I’d finally had a chance to take the old V8 out for a spin! So the pregnancy didn’t take… it still was a pretty significant First in my life. That’s not worth some discussion? “Oh, nothing really! Nothing is new! Nothing at all!” Fuck that.

So, I tried the silence route, and it’s not for me. Not that I’ll be blabbing about it left, right and center, because that’s snoozeville for folks who find it irrelevant. But with the folks who are really close to me, I’m more likely to talk about it now.

Wake Up, You Sleepy Astronauts!

I submitted the song below for NASA’s contest to pick the song that would wake up the astronauts on the final shuttle mission later this year. The public will vote to pick a winner. But NASA didn’t even pick this song as one of the ones that could be voted on, which frankly makes me question everything about the space agency.

The song was written by Anu Kirk and Rich Trott with a line or two (and the whole idea of writing a song for the contest) suggested by Jessica Forys. The song is performed by Palace Family Steak House and features the Final Frontiersmen. Performers on the recording are: Anu Kirk, Rich Trott, JP Lester, Joel Primer, and Ted, Kelly, and Greg from the Final Frontiersmen.

New York Times Cook Book Project

Look what my awesome wife got for me!

The New York Times Cook Book

The word glögg appears in a chapter title—no joke!

This can only mean one thing: I will embark on an attempt to cook every recipe in the book in the order in which they appear.

Stay tunes.

Deputy Marriage Commissioner

We are thrilled that our friend Jessica will be officiating our wedding!

Today, at City Hall, she was sworn in as a Deputy Marriage Commissioner so that she could legally perform the wedding.

Sorry about not getting her face in the photo.

Invitation

This past week, our invitations finally started making their way across the country to their new homes.

We made them ourselves. (Technically, Rich’s contribution—very valuable—was to keep me watered & fed, and to not bat an eye when I wanted to be driven all over town to make sad attempts and printing, and then to not bat an eye when I wanted to just buy a printer. He was a champ.) It was a lot of work, and already there are a few things I wish I’d done differently, but overall I’m quite happy with them.

The envelopes and folders are from Paper and More, the typefaces are from Font Bros—I heartily endorse both of these companies, they offer extraordinary products and service at disproportionately affordable prices.

My previous secret shame of glue gun ownership has ballooned into a literal embarrassment of crafting supplies.

Hawaii FAQ

Earlier this month, I finally redeemed the very generous gift for my 40th birthday from Humu and her mom: a trip to Hawaii for Humu and me!

The first question everyone asks is “Which islands?” Oahu, Hawaii (“The Big Island”), Maui.

The next question is usually “Where did you stay?” Waikiki, Kailua-Kona, and north of Lahaina (which were the fancy accommodations of the trip–it was a Westin resort).

“Have you ever been before?” Nope. First time for me. (Humu lived there as a child for a year and had been there once before as an adult.)

“What did you do?” Too much to answer, but some highlights were:

Volcanoes National Park: hiking, driving, pit craters, caldera, lunar-like lava, all of it
seeing the sun set over the ocean from the patio at Don The Beachcomber’s in Kailua-Kona
watching ridiculously large waves at the beach near Mama’s Fish House on Maui
seeing a whale…from the window of the inter-island flight
seeing college friends who live on Oahu, seeing a friend who used to live in San Francisco who now lives on Maui, and meeting a childhood friend of Humu’s who now lives on Oahu
spending time with Humu somewhere where we (mostly) weren’t thinking about work, what needs to be done with the house, and wedding planning

“Where are the pictures?” Alas, I’m not much of a shutterbug. The only picture I took was of a display in one of the airports. It was about macadamia nuts and the display prominently featured a recipe.

“Did you have a good time?” It was amazing! Thanks, Humu + Schmama!

The Most Important Mix Tape Of Your Life

I officially now know why people choose Pachelbel’s Canon in D for their processional music at their weddings. It used to puzzle me a little bit, but now I get it.

Picking something else that’s appropriate is daunting.

The music that’s played while people wander in, the music that’s played for the processional, and then the music that’s played as the bride walks down the aisle—it’s the shortest but most important mix tape of your life. Each piece has to be perfect but also has to fit with the other pieces.

Pachelbel works, and everyone knows it, so they go with it.

No disrespect to Johann, but ours will be a Pachelbel-free wedding. Humu has her music picked out. I’m working on selecting mine. And it’s a lot harder than I anticipated.

The Forecast Calls for Papercuts

Driven by our house-pilfered pocketbooks, and by our desire to steer well clear of the frankly terrifying Matrimonial Industrial Complex, we’re avoiding vendors where possible. The first test of this is our wedding invitations.

It’s actually a big treat for me, because I don’t get many opportunities to do graphic design in printed form, and it’s really my first love when it comes to design. Thankfully, I have done enough printed work over the years that I know where all the pitfalls lie, and I’m not really worried about making any tragic errors. My main worries are about creating a design I can be happy with.

Erm... no.

The invitation sets the tone for our event; every element—from colors to typefaces to language to layout to the paper it’s printed on—sends a subtle cue about what to expect. It’s a little bit tricky. We want the wedding to be casual and intimate, and most of all real. But at the same time, we also want it to have some weight and formality, some solemnity. As Linus would say, it needs to be sincere. If the Great Pumpkin were invited (he isn’t), we would want him to see the invitation and RSVP in the affirmative without hesitation.

I’ve been browsing through invitations online to get some thoughts on design, and many invitations out there are far too girly for my taste. Too many flowers, too many swirls. Sure, most of them are lovely, and well-executed, but they also look like maybe the groom isn’t invited.

I have a design underway, and I’m mostly happy with it. The wedding colors are orange, brown and cream, which keeps it gender-neutral and matches the goofy-but-I’m-keeping-them orange dining room curtains that came with our house. Also matches Trottomatic, which is doing double-duty as our wedding website.

However, I can already tell that if I let the invitation design sit for a day and come back to it, I’m not going to be happy with it. Plus, once I have it all printed, the assembly is going to be no small feat. There’s still lots of work to do, but it’s fun work. After the invitations are completely done, I’ll post the design, along with a blow-by-blow of the invitation creation.

Trottmas

It only looks like a gray alien tree in the photo. In person, it's lovely! Like the nice parts of Dickens!

Our first Christmas in the new house has been slow and quiet. I’ve had a couple of weeks off from work (SLAC shuts down for two weeks every winter), and Trott’s had some extra time off thanks to the University of California furloughs. We stayed home during the holidays. We saw most of my family during a Seattle trip in early December; Rich’s family is Jewish, and “Hanukkah” is short for “Hanukkah Is a Minor Holiday.” I did make some rookie-grade latkes (too wet), and some professional-grade wassail (too much). We went to a few friends’ parties, and I put a solid dent in the Smuggler’s Cove menu. We’ve also made a little progress on some of our house projects, but—whoa nelly—do we have a ways to go.

But we have made some solid progress on the wedding, which is a relief. I met with my friend Thayer, who is going to help me with some alterations to the vintage wedding gown I found on eBay. Rich and I finalized our guest list, and have started getting out Save the Date information.

We discovered that our neighbors across the street got married in their house, too (on May 15, no less!), and they even saved the tent they bought for the occasion, and have offered it to us. The layout of their house is nearly identical to ours, and they gave us some great logistical ideas. The list of reasons we love our new neighborhood keeps growing and growing.

Next step: invitations.

Oh, no, wait… next step: pupusas. Then invitations. Mission Terrace is the bee’s knees.

Ow, My Guest List! It HUUUURRRRTS!

We’ve been avoiding dealing with the wedding stuff. It’s been easy, we’ve had plenty to distract us. The real reason for the avoidance: the dreaded guest list.

Here’s what we have figured out so far for the wedding:

The Time: the evening of Saturday, May 15, 2010
The Place: Our house

Venues in SF are stupid-expensive, we quickly learned, and hey, didn’t we just BUY A BUILDING IN SF? Our house holds way more meaning for us than some rental space we’re not likely to step foot in again, and doesn’t come with time limits or restricted catering choices. The critical next step, which needs to happen about a month ago, is getting invitations out.

Which brings us to that guest list trouble. There are two immediate problems: 1) we don’t have any idea how many people our house can hold, and 2) we know it’s not nearly big enough to hold everyone we want to invite. By a long shot. Spreadsheets have been employed, with elaborate flags and tallies and round after round after round of ever-more painful cuts.

Oof.

Thankfully, we have a lot of understanding on both sides of the family. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from friends about pressure to add distant second cousins only met once, or parents’ business associates, or vague “family friends” no one seems to actually know. We know we have it easy, overall. It’s still really rough. We just have to man up, get over it, and remember we’re not throwing a dinner party. Just because we don’t have room for someone doesn’t mean we don’t adore them, and I think everyone will totally get it (especially those who have been through this before themselves).

But man, this is rough business.

Trottomatic Halloween

It’s probably not very hard to figure out which one of us carved which pumpkin…

Launching Trottomatic

Lotsa stuff happening in our life together, the biggest of course that it’s now an “our” kind of a deal (which is pretty super-sweet). Naturally, as every moderne family must have these days, we’ve got our very own Trott Family Domain Name. Trottomatic.com hits the trifecta: easy to remember, easy to spell, and available. (I was lobbying for Trottopolis.com, but Trottomatic grew on me.) Also: we get to bastardize one of our favorite Sid Luscious & the Pants songs as we sing around the house: “It’s Trottomatic! It’s Trottomatically true! It’s Trottomatic! It’s Trottomatic with you!” So, you know, that’s kinda neat.

Okay, here’s a quickie guide to our initially scant content: If you’re new to either Rich or me, then the About Rich or About Humuhumu pages may be of interest. If you’d like to hear about how we came together, then How We Met is worth a gander. If you already know all that and are dying to hear details about the wedding, well… right now we’ve got bupkis. Rich did take the time to write up the story of The Proposal, though.