Cocktails, Cake…and Paring Down to the Bone

So this entry is, in part, about skeletons.  Read on; you’ll see what I mean, and no, I’m not talking about what might be lurking in a closet.

First, the cocktails: In the spirit of using things up, I’ve been slowly working my way through our liquor cabinet. Can’t completely not re-stock because then we’d be down to vile concoctions of various flavored liqueurs. But I do have this very lovely bottle of Zaya dark rum, excellent for sipping solo, though we’ve not doing much of that since I’ve gotten into interesting cocktails. The hubby mentioned that sipping liquors straight is . . . well, kind of boring. (Sorry if I’ve offended any purists out there.) I see his point, though. Not only is it fun to try out new cocktails, I like trying out new tastes. Sipping bourbon or rye or whatever solo is okay, but it’s like anything else: variety is the spice of life.

So, I focused on rum drinks this week. I was going to do a Dark ‘n Stormy (a highball you build over ice: rum, simple syrup, lime juice, and then ginger beer), but it turned a little cold here (yes, dark and stormy) and I always associate fizzy drinks with warm weather.

Then I stumbled on a couple recipes for rum Manhattans. The classic drink is very easy: bourbon, sweet vermouth, bitters, and a maraschino cherry for a garnish. (In the course of my research, I found a recipe for real maraschino cherries that I’m eager to try once we’re settled in our new digs.) I remember Manhattans from my misspent youth, but they’re not drinks that have stuck with me as must-haves.  (Not so for an old choral director I once knew and who professed a fondness for a really good Manhattan.  For Christmas one year, I supplied her with a lovely bottle of Knob Creek, one of sweet vermouth, and a jar of maraschino cherries. She certainly seemed to be very ho-ho-ho for a while after that. Never once yelled at me for going a touch sharp on that high C.)

Making a Manhattan with rum has never occurred to me, though, perhaps because I’m not much of a rum drinker when you get right down to it.  I’ve always associated rum with bad and boozy frat parties as well as unctuous umbrella drinks ending with –tiki.

At any rate, some of these rum Manhattan recipes were very involved. Bay leaf infusions. Marinated blueberries. They reminded me of high-end whiskey cocktails you make with things like Earl Grey infused syrup and that kind of stuff. (Yes, I have a book on this. Soon, soon . . . I got to move first before I start filling up the cellar with mason jars of this and that.  In fact, one of the saddest moments this spring was when I looked at a sack of bing cherries and realized that, this year, I was not going to be making Martha Washington’s cherry bounce.)

Anyway, we tried this very simple rum Manhattan recipe, mainly because I had everything on hand: rum, Carpano Antica, orange bitters, and maraschino liqueur.

Very easy. Pour into a mixing glass filled with ice, stir the heck out of it for a good minute, and then strain into a martini glass or other flared cocktail glass. Garnish with a twist. Enjoy. The only thing I didn’t do was chill the glasses.

This drink didn’t have the bourbon-bite I normally associate with Manhattans. This cocktail actually improved as it warmed to the point where I could really taste the orange notes mingling with those bitters and was extraordinarily smooth, so much so that I’d finished mine before I even realized it. That is, I think, because Zaya, a splendid sipping rum, is also a touch sweeter than most which really helps you enjoy fruitier notes.  This is, I suspect, why so many rum Manhattan recipes focus on esoteric fruit combos. (Like those blueberries you marinate in Marsala wine for a week.)

Anyway, a keeper. And I still have a good half bottle of Zaya to get through. Oh, and a couple baggies of frozen blueberries . . . though will they marinate well? Probably not. Hmmm…oh, but look, here are some blackberries. Now I do have a recipe for a blackberry shrub somewhere that you use in a weird julep. Ooooh, now there’s a thought.

***

One thing about getting ready to move: you focus on getting rid, debriding, paring down. I’ve been slowly working my way through a standing chest freezer, using up frozen veggies, fruit, a couple steaks with freezer-burn, lumps of hamburger from a quarter-cow I shared with a friend eons ago. That boneless leg of lamb that’s been sitting at the very bottom since the beginning of time was a dicey proposition, but there is almost nothing a good long soak in a great marinade won’t cure. (Yes, the lamb was delish, especially after a long, leisurely roast on the grill.)

Anyway, I unearthed these bananas I’d tossed in that the hubby didn’t get to in time because I’m a pack rat that way. I hate throwing things away, although I don’t have as much trouble as I did given that I compost everything I can. But I thought, okay, what can you do with frozen bananas other than banana bread?

Why…banana cake, of course.

Now, I’ve made banana cakes before—banana walnut, banana chocolate chip, chocolate banana chocolate chip–and they’ve all turned out well. This time, though, I wanted a different taste because, honestly, I used to adore peanut butter and banana sandwiches and I also craved a challenge: the swirl. See, I suck at swirling. I can’t marble a cake to save my life. Don’t ask me why. Well, all right, you can ask. The truth is I worry about scratching my nice bundt pan with that bloody knife. So I wimp out and what I usually end up with are tasty half-layers and floating islands instead of true swirls.

Which is where this Nutella-Swirl Banana Chocolate Chip Cake with Nutella Glaze comes in. Didn’t hurt that I also have this jumbo jar of Nutella that needed using up, too.

The batter was a cinch. Everything was a cinch and here we are, with a first layer of regular batter topped with Nutella batter and then globs of regular batter . . .

And then came that moment . . . to swirl.

I stood there, just sort of pondering, looking from the pan to my knife and trying to figure out how I wanted to do this when, all of a sudden, I had this sudden Bart-Simpson DOH moment: Ilsa, you idiot, you have a rubber spatula.

I won’t say that I swirled the heck out of that batter because then I’d end up with weirdly colored batter. But I did get brave. I applied a little muscle; I got assertive. Swirl, baby, swirl.

Of course, I have no idea if it worked because I never cut into my cakes before I send them off to my guinea pigs . . . er, David’s lab folks. I would if this was a layer cake, but you can’t have everything. On the other hand, it’s relatively pretty (except for that odd slump to the left), so fingers crossed. Being ever the pragmatist, the hubby pointed out that, once you start chewing, what a cake looks like hardly matters.

Got to love his attitude.

***

And speaking of keeping things or not . . . another weird dream this morning. I remember very little except I was outside, sweeping up debris from around the detached garage and there, hanging on a limb, was an old mummified opossum (mostly bones and leathery skin) and a mouse skeleton. In the dream, I’m thinking, Oh, better get rid of those before the new folks move in. So I grab this long stick and start poking at the opossum, trying to dislodge it. The body kind of caves in a bit, and then I wake up.

And I think . . . oh-kaaay.

I’m not exactly sure about this one. I do know I’ve been focused on the shed this week because an inspector found a leak and I’m lining up roofing guys to come, check out the damage, and do the repairs. Really, the leak is a minor thing, no big deal, though I’m shocked I didn’t notice earlier, and I have to admit I’m a little embarrassed, too, because I try hard to take good care of the place. So I’m like. . . shoot. (Yes, I said something stronger.)

But I have also been into purging again, and the business of getting rid of detritus because I know we won’t have the space. Mostly, now, I’ve focused on my trillions of books.

You have to understand: my books were always the first thing I unpacked whenever I moved anywhere, whether it was to another room in a college dorm or an apartment. Until my books were up and in proper order, I never felt settled.

Same thing here, although I did a major purge of professional books way back when I emptied out my Virginia office prior to our move to Wisconsin. (Gave away, like, 300 tomes.) Most of my books lived in boxes for a long time until we finished out the basement. I do remember how satisfying it was to finally put them all up—and still, I didn’t have enough room. We still ran out of shelf space and so built more in the kids’ rooms (as they built up their own collections), and I finally resorted to simply stacking my old sf paperbacks in drawers and cabinets.

Yeah. A lot of books.

So this past week, in between outlining the new book, I started emptying shelves again, taking a good hard look at books I hadn’t so much as cracked in years. In a way, the experience of emptying those shelves was very much like editing a manuscript: you don’t want to kill your babies, but not every word deserves to live.

Thus far, I’ve taken about 350 books to Goodwill. Most are out-of-date shrink books as well as scads of more esoteric Judaica (Rashi, Talmud, etc.). They belong to past lives, and I just can’t see bringing them along for old-time’s sake. I’m planning on culling my classics, too, because let’s face it: classics are classics and you can find them in any library (or, horrors, easily download them for nothing). Those, I’m giving a college kid first crack—an English major; nice boy—and then whatever’s left goes to Goodwill.

First off, it’s a little strange, looking at my bookshelves now, how they’re down to . . .well, the bare bones. (Ah, I knew those dream-skeletons meant something.)

I mean, honey . . . those shelves were packed and you guys aren’t seeing the shelves I emptied in other rooms.  I know this doesn’t look like much debriding, but trust me–and there’s still more to come.

On the other hand, having taken all these books to Goodwill—getting rid of all that weight—has also felt great. It’s like I said to a daughter: There’s no point to moving sentiment. It just takes up space. I would add that sentiment can also weigh on you, quite a bit. It’s as if I’ve given myself permission to own up to the fact that I don’t practice shrinkdom anymore. I don’t really belong to a shul anymore either. I’ve moved on, and for now, I’m a writer.

Which brings me to my sf collection.

I don’t have TONS, but I have enough . . . and it’s funny, but those books, most of which are tucked away in drawers, I’m keeping. I’m not sure why. I haven’t looked at them in years and before we moved here, I got rid of a gazillion of them (including Children of Dune as it appeared in its original serialized version . . . I know, I know, what was I thinking?).  Although I have an inkling my reluctance has got to do with the book I’m outlining now, one that takes place in the past, right around the time that science fiction really started to take off. In doing the outline, I find myself revisiting old favorites I haven’t read in forever—my God, when was the last time I picked up Bloch or Simak or Bradbury or Siodmak or . . . I could go on. But my characters are kids and that’s what they’re reading now in all those vintage pulps and listening to on great radio shows like Suspense (although their two-parter take on Donovan’s Brain, with Orson Welles, was an anomaly). SF was the adolescent literature of my day, and so I’m looking at these old books I haven’t touched in so long and thinking, No, you guys, I’ll keep. I’m not promising that I’ll actually re-read them—or discover new books by old writers I overlooked. I’m not exactly sure that I’m returning to my roots. But I do find that the prospect of seeing these guys again—reading Bloch, a writer I overlooked because of his close kinship with Lovecraft who was (I’m sorry) just not my cuppa–kind of exciting.  Fun.

Now, Lovecraft still may not be my cuppa, but I do find this: I haven’t really enjoyed reading much lately. Part of that is all this sturm und drang: Egmont, the move, yada, yada. Part is envy, a feeling of shoot, I used to know how to do that, so why am I not?

But, all of a sudden, having found this thread in the story I’m outlining now, I’m all excited again: eager to read these guys, eager to flesh this out, eager to let my characters enjoy and lose themselves in a good story. (That the sf stories and books my characters are reading just so happen to nicely dovetail on and complement my story’s themes is just so much proverbial icing on the cake and serendipity, too.  Until I actually looked through a Weird Tales from 1944, I had no idea that a certain story would so closely mirror what’s going on in my book.)

So, is all this–the fact that a story is starting to come alive for me; that I’m in the throes of what I think is an outline I’ll actually finish and a book I will actually write–happening because things are settling down here? That I’ve accepted the move as inevitable and understand that it’s time to, literally, move on, pare things down to the bone?

Probably.  Quite possibly.

I just hope this good feeling lasts. Been a long time.