Science question of the day

What is it about nutmeg that makes the froth of a cappuccino disappear? The two are simply incompatible.

Year in Review

Yes, I’ve been very bad about keeping up with my blog. I’ll add it to my list of “growth” areas for 2009.

*

These past few months I’ve kept myself busy with various writing projects and with yoga. The studio at which I teach, Yoga to the People (a by-donation studio with locations on St. Marks Place in New York and in Berkeley, CA), has been getting a lot of media attention of late. It’s been written up in Vogue, Yoga Journal and New York Magazine. Just recently Time Out New York declared YTTP a good place to meet singles. In January we’ll be opening up a hot yoga studio in Midtown. Exciting.

*

I’ve been back in Minnesota for about a week now. As soon as I got home from the airport, Cassandra and I launched our gingerbread project, thereby ensuring that Christmas would indeed happen. Gingerbread men sort of embody everything I love about life: ginger, happiness, anthropomorphized food. Like Paris, yogurt and Marias novels, we were made for each other.

Not my gingerbread men.

There is something weirdly satisfying about being in a place that takes winter so seriously, where for about three solid months the mercury rarely creeps above freezing. I had a wonderful Minneapolis day yesterday, complete with a trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and mock duck rolls at Jasmine Deli. There are so many perfect days to be had here. (The same is true for New York, of course, but the scarcity of my time here makes those days so much more poignant.)

The Frank Lloyd Wright area of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Random observation: There’s more crepuscular purple in Minneapolis’s sky than in New York’s. Minneapolis often purples. Par exemple:

Purple Minneapolis

I feel like the sky often looks like this. Or perhaps that’s just how I like to remember it.

Molly’s Madeleine

I really will write a longer blog post soon but in the meantime, I wanted to draw your attention to this New York Times article written by my friend Molly. (Molly, who was planning on becoming a chef, lost her sense of smell when she was hit by a car. She writes about her gradual recovery of the sense. For more, check out the link to her blog on the right-hand side of this page.)

Second best panhandler sign…

“Obama isn’t the only one who wants change.”

–on St. Marks Place, September 17th, 2008

Weather Report

I’m back in New York, where the weather really seems to have taken Memorial Day to heart. Suddenly, as of Monday, it is summer–I mean, it really feels like summer–and I am elated. I sort of die inside during the winter, when my wont to wander and drink outside is stifled by the cold… Winter antagonizes street life and, frankly, I live to see things like golden retrievers shaved like lions (Prospect Park) and grown men constructing diaromas (Washington Square Park). There’s a Balzac quote that I love which says that the counter of a café is the parliment of the people. In which case, I would say that the sidewalks are the theatres.

I should add that spring in Park Slope was beautiful: the neighborhood’s flowering cherry blossoms made me think of pink frosted cupcakes… (Oddly, I only like frosting visually.) April and May were delicious months for me. There’s so much to love about this neighborhood…

I just got in from an abrupt rainstorm. Walking only half a block from the 7th Avenue Duane Reade to my apartment was enough to get me drenched. It was a refreshing (if unanticipated) shower, actually, and I learned something: a dress is the ideal garment for getting caught in the rain. (I never hate pants so much as when it’s raining…pants become bifurcated tyrants. A pox on them!!) One would think that I would have had this meteoro-sartorial epiphany during rainy season in Guadeloupe mais non–I’m just realizing it now.

The List

There are times when having an engineer for a father provides entertainment that other kids can only dream of: a velcro GPS holder on our car’s steering wheel, water bottle yokes fashioned out of rope, geocaching. (To be fair, this latter one was suggested by my sister.) As I have written before, my father is a man of adorable quirks.

As per tradition, my dad cooks for me whenever I am back in Minnesota; he is an artful griller. Last night we decided to have lemon-infused salmon and asparagus with a bottle of Vouvray–every bit as good as it sounds. When my dad walked in on my mom drawing up a grocery list he interjected dramatically: “No!! We have to pull up The List!”

The List?

“Oooh, you’re going to love The List,” my mom assured me.

They walk me over to the computer and proudly show me a spreadsheet that my dad has created to streamline grocery shopping. The List includes every item my parents would possibly want from our local grocery store. In a column next to the desired item (English Muffins, for example) is its location (Aisle 4). There’s also a column for them to write down the quantity. Once my parents go through selecting which items they want, they print off their list, which is reduced down to only the groceries they selected.

I am told that this has shaved minutes off their grocery runs. My dad marvels at how inefficient and haphazard my mom’s approach to grocery shopping once was. She was a real maverick with the grocery cart, let me tell you. I didn’t think anyone could tame her wild wanderings through the aisles of Cub Foods…

It’s nice to be home with my mild-mannered eccentrics.

Overheard at Whole Foods:

A child throwing a tantrum in the check-out line because he wanted Vitamin Water. Not candy, ice cream or soda. VITAMIN WATER.

Conclusion: New York kids are weird.

Geo-jewels

A news report on WNYC just described the Midwest as “the country’s midsection.” Since when did we go from being America’s “heartland”–a phrase I don’t particularly like either–to America’s “midsection?” Downgraded from a vital organ to a bulging waistline… This is East coast snobbery at its worst.

In any case, Minneapolis is surely the sparkly navel ring in the great Midwestern belly. Sort of like the way India was the jewel of the British crown. Only with less oppression. And less gin. Mmm, gin…

Sugar, bring me sugar

As you may have noticed, my blog posts on peeps dioramas and Candy Land are consistently the top traffic-attractors on Besotted Gleaner. Not because they are particularly interesting posts–I’m not especially proud of them. My family and friends certainly aren’t returning to them in times of uncertainty, mining them for their golden nuggets (or nougats?) of sagacity or anything. Rather, it is strangers who account for this heavy traffic. Random people that I don’t even know.

I can see what search engine terms bring people to my blog and I have learned this: the people love candy. Searches such as “marshmallow peeps” and “Queen Frostine Candyland” frequently direct seekers here, where candied pleasantries flow like Pez from my chronically backward-hinging head. (This all leads me to think that I should devote myself to candy writing–there seems to be an audience for it.)

On an related note, someone once searched “crazy horse gay” and came to my Medici post. (?!?!) I like to imagine the motivations that drive such searches…

*The title for this post is taken from yet another Tori Amos song.

Survival Kits

I have a weird habit of purloining spoons. Not just any spoon, mind you; I prefer the type of spoon that might accompany a demitasse of espresso (perhaps at the Café de Flore). Spoons that do dainty work: gentle stirring, maybe some light sugar transport–nothing too strenuous. These spoons are meant for the finer things.

Finer things like yogurt. (Yes, my spoon thievery is related to my yogurt obsession.)

I began taking spoons when I first got deep into yogurt, around the time I went to Florence. My first spoon was Italian, then French (stolen from a university cafeteria–a nice shallow spoon that my mouth misses to this day), then Colombian (abducted from a cafe that I frequented: I built up trust then made my move–I have no regrets). The Colombian spoon is still in active duty and has just been joined an American comrade, an acquisition from a recent brunch.

I normally carry a small spoon with me everywhere. I need to be ready for yogurt at all times. The plastic spoons that they give you at the delis here are crude instruments, too large and cheap to serve as appropriate yogurt-conveyors. I like soft, spoonable foods and want to be able to enjoy them on my terms at any time, wherever I may be.

I know that this probably makes me sound mildly crazy, but I think that we all have our survival kits. (Even Batman has his utility belt.) In addition to my yogurt spoons, I always have an emergency book with me. My mother carries Blistex and pens with her and my dad cannot be without a piece of rope. Even on my sister’s wedding day he had a small cord of rope tucked into his tux pocket.

I’m not sure which I love more: the fact that my dad carries a piece of rope with him everywhere or the expression of utter satisfaction that he gets when he finds an application for his rope. “I sure am glad I had this handy piece of rope with me,” he’ll say, fully aware of how adorable my sisters and I find this quirk.

I talked to my dad last Friday, just before he left for Kazakhstan. As we spoke, he was loading Almaty’s coordinates into his GPS, another one of his survival tools. What’s funny to me is that I am comforted by the fact that wherever Mike Doll goes, he’ll have his rope and his GPS.