The "I know a guy" world

 

This is something I know better than most. Not only is it how I grew up, it's how what passes for my career and my life remain some degree of stable.

My family is poor, and so am I. No getting around that. Most of us barely scrape by, some not even, and we're deep into lots of blue-collar miscellany. Construction. Landscaping. Architecture. Transport. Education. Moving. Thing is, we talk to each other, and to our coworkers. Most of us have high-level skills and specialties in different areas, but we also have our blind spots. When one of us runs into a problem we can't solve, we probably know a guy that might be able to help.

If my mom has a car problem, we call a friend who's a gearhead. If the car guy thinks he can help, he might come over and fix it- save us a few hundred bucks for a tow and an auto shop. If he can't fix it, he might know the best local mechanic that can. Or maybe he'll know where we can get a loaner ride on the cheap till the car's fixed. 

This is where the I Know a Guy economy becomes more cyclical and asymmetrical. We owe him a favor now. Repaying that favor is a question of fairness and facility. It usually isn't extreme, but it tends to be something unrelated. The Car Guy might not take any money from us because he knows we're broke. But he might take us up on it if he gets asked to stay for dinner. Or he might need something else down the road. Maybe he'll ask us for a ride to the airport at the end of the month because his wife won't be home from work yet that day and can't take him. It's still useful, it's still time and effort, and there's an opportunity to chat and catch up a little.

Favors done, favors repaid, favors remembered. An effective barter system, built slowly and deliberately on a foundation of trust and expertise. Those are valuable currency in times of uncertainty, and those times are certainly here.

One of the strong but fading bastions of that world is the restaurant industry.

You line up a good restaurant's staff, and what do you see? Cooks, chefs, servers, bartenders, managers, porters, cleaners... but there's a whole lot more besides. Most of them might also be welders, contractors, farmers, mechanics, landscapers, teachers, translators, plumbers, electricians, paralegals, or any number of a hundred other things... because at some point they've had to be. They often can't afford to live like real people on what their vocation provides, so instead they find other ways to try and make it work.

What that methodology doesn't work with, though, is most of modern corporate culture, especially the 'hustle' mindset. You really can't build relationships like these if you're too busy trying to monetize every last thing in the short term, as so many pretty much have to. There's not enough time to build that bank of trust and reciprocity, to truly develop into what might become a community.

No physical security, no financial security, no communal reassurance.

There's not a lot of hope left in the world these days.

Quite the busy while.

 

Lot of worries. 

Lot of troubles.

Lot of questions.

Mostly, I have answers.

But the big one remains.

When they begin to forget me, what then?

I'm used to being invisible. Damn good at it, even when I don't try to be.

But that talent, so carefully cultivated, turns upon itself when others' memories start to go.

Recipe Dev: Tom Collins Twists

 

I'm not usually a big shortbread person most of the time. When I want a cookie, I usually just want a cookie- not a cookie alongside other things. Be it coffee, tea, cocoa, fruit, or something else entirely, most of the shortbreads I know are designed to be eaten accompanied.

So my research went wider, trying to make one that was just fine on its own.

I don't thiiiink this counts as a shortbread any more, but it's really nice!

It's an eggless shortbread-adjacent cookie that's soft enough to verge on being a batter. It's extremely easy to work with, too. I actually pipe these, and if you're nervous about working with a piping bag, this cookie is a fantastic place to start. Using a wide star tip creates plenty of plausible deniability for how it looks, and the glaze will hide anything more egregious. They're not fancy, but they look fancy, especially with the icing.

Tom Collins Twists (makes 30-36)

Equipment:

Mixer (I use a hand mixer for these but with enough vigor it's easily doable by hand)
1x Large Bowl
2x Medium Bowl
Silicone Spatula, Large
Piping Bag / Piping Tips
Whisk
Scale
Measuring Spoons
Fine Strainer (In case of dry ingredient clumping)
Sheet Tray (Ideally two)
Parchment Paper
Oven (Preheat to 350F / 180C / Gas Mark 4)

Ingredients: (All at room temperature- extremely important to ensure a smooth, workable dough)

8oz / 225g Unsalted Butter
8oz / 225g Cream Cheese**
1 1/2 cups / 180g Powdered Sugar
1Tbsp Vanilla
Zest of 1 lime and 1 lemon (about 1 Tbsp in total)
3 Tbsp Lime Juice

2 3/4 cups / 400g APF
1/2 cup / 75g Cornstarch
1 tsp salt

Powdered Sugar
Gin

Process:

Preheat the oven, line the sheet tray(s) with parchment, and prepare the piping bag/tip.

Going down the list, combine all the ingredients up to but not including the lime juice in the Large Bowl.
Using the mixer, beat till smooth and well combined, 1-2 minutes.
Add the lime juice and mix for 5 seconds or so, then set aside.

Using the Scale, weigh out the APF, Cornstarch, and Salt in the Medium Bowl.
Add the contents to the Large Bowl, and mix on low till just combined, then finish mixing by hand with the Silicone Spatula to ensure minimal gluten development.

Load the Piping Bag with 15-20% of the dough, and pipe in squiggles, making vaguely rectangular shapes about 1.5" x 3". With a standard large star tip this will be five back-and-forth sweeps.

Approximately 15-18 will fit on a standard baking sheet in a 3x5 or 3x6 configuration

Bake for approximately 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and allow to cool for another 15 on the tray.

While cooling, prepare the glaze by whisking together ~1 cup powdered sugar with 2-3 Tbsp of gin, adjusting till you have a thick but pourable result. Add a squeeze or two of lime juice too if you like.

Gently drizzle the glaze over the cooled cookies. Allow to set for at least an hour afterward just in case.

-----------

So, the tricks in the recipe are as follows

-It uses APF as its primary structure, but it's somewhat heavily cut with cornstarch to make it resemble cake flour, so a bit more delicate. 

-There's no granulated sugar, only confectioner's sugar (which also has some cornstarch in it).

-The dough includes cream cheese**

-The glaze is made with alcohol, ensuring faster evaporation and drying with less danger of rendering the cookie soggy.

Even when you really don't care about making them look good they're still not bad! See?

**I picked this notion up from Daniela Galarza's Apple Tassies recipe several years back. Can't lay my hands on the recipe right now -it was two laptops and two desktop towers ago- but if I remember correctly, the ratio for that one was something like 2 parts butter to 3 parts cream cheese to 4 parts APF. You get the binding, the dairy, the fat, and the tang. For something like this where the primary flavor is citrus, it works wonders to round the flavor out.

In what world are the untrained, unskilled, and unfinished this absurdly self-important?

 

"SF restaurant to temporarily close after influencer says she left crying"

Is this place's management out of its mind?! Is everyone online just on the lookout for a dogpile?

Well, at this point the latter seems like a given. But that's what happens when you give voices to those incapable of deserving them. 'The Internet', everyone.

For someone to have "alleged that the owner treated her disrespectfully, saying her TikTok following of 15,000 was inadequate to represent the restaurant" after presumably being taken seriously enough to be in the running for a potential collaboration tells me that this... make-believe member of online media... sold a flagrantly false bill of goods to the restaurant re: utility and value, then got rightly called out on it.

The absolute absurdity to pay any attention to the voice of an underdeveloped, overvoiced "~iNflUeNCer~" has me genuinely staggered. But what's worse still is the fallout.

The resultant temper tantrum from this has resulted in an avalanche of utterly irrational and false negative reviews, and a massive overreaction from the restaurant's management. The chef's gone. The restaurant's closed, albeit "temporarily". A former restaurant is buried in negative press too!

When someone's life is seen by vast numbers before they're qualified for that privilege, problems are inevitable. People with actual value suffer.

This mess probably just killed two restaurants and dozens of livelihoods because a counterfeit collaborator couldn't stand to be told the truth- that their contributions weren't worth the trouble. 

Way to go, you thin-skinned, petty peasant.

 

I realized that I've basically become Uncle Iroh.

One who tries very hard to be good. 

One who did right by his family, even when they betray the principles they taught. 

One who serves as a mentor, a guide, and a surrogate parent to any number of others.

One who is still, despite the passage of time, an absolute demon in a fight.

One who (perhaps offscreen) absolutely Fucks.

Almost all of that is fine.

What bothers me, though, is the paradigm shift to Mentor/Guide.

I don't want to do that. Certainly shouldn't have to. But circumstance and betrayal have left it my only recourse. 

To do everything exactly right and suffer anyway. So many opportunities I was first promised, then owed, and always denied.

Now... all I have left is to do what I can for others, to help them prepare as much for similar fates as to avoid them.

Considering additional income sources

 

One friend says things like OnlyFans. He's silly. I'm... okay, he does have a point. I'm probably very appealing to no small number of people. But I'm also an experience that doesn't really translate well to picture and video. Much better to appreciate up close- and those who so know me would likely agree.

But then there are things like Patreon. I have a vast amount of knowledge and experience. I'm a world-class expert in no small number of largely disparate fields. Like my blurb on the side says- if you have a question, and I have an answer, you can trust it. People might well pay for that. Even just for reliable access to that.

I'm also a storyteller. My life experience has given my perspective and analytical utility a depth that is vanishingly rare. Those experiences could, if properly revisited, be of enormous entertainment and development value to any number of knowledge seekers.

On the other hand, there are already tons of people out there (substantially inferior in quality, but more visible and more aggressively productive) who are desperately flooding the visible world, on and offline alike, with their own better-off-hidden miscellany.

Do I go for it anyway?

...Do I have anything to lose?

Book Review: "Baking Across America: A Vintage Recipe Roadtrip", by B. Dylan Hollis

 

I’ve read A Lot of cookbooks. Whether because I’m researching, reviewing, or even just bored, there’s always something that separates the better and the best. It’s not usually the recipes, the pictures, or even the quality of the volume itself- it’s the theming. A solid modern or contemporary cookbook shows itself best where every page leads organically into the next. Where each recipe has its place both in the section, the book, and even the genre. While I know a good number, it’s still not a common thing, and so I always make a note.

That damn TikTok twink did it twice in a row!

In an impressive first publication, B. Dylan Hollis debuted with Baking Yesteryear, in which he offers a rich historical account of 20^th century American food decade by decade alongside no small amount of recipes from each- including a hilariously awful Worst Of The Worst chapter at the end, because where there are recipes, there are inevitably bad recipes, and whoooo boy did he ever find some clunkers.

Here in his second book Baking Across America, however, we have something very different yet also very familiar. "Baking Across America" does exactly what it says it does. It’s a journey through the U.S., region by region and state by state in search of what might be called the Defining Specialties of each and every one. Now how Dylan went about this is both very clever and very appropriate. Hundreds upon hundreds of cookbooks from every nook and cranny of every last place, and as local as can be- you name the obscure or local organization, he probably found something. Then to scour each and every one looking for recipes and concepts in common, narrowing things down with some quite thorough historical research until there was little if any real doubt about the notions.

There are some (even many) recipes that might raise an eyebrow at first look. My home state of New Jersey is, for example, poleaxed via the alchemical marvel that is the Tomato Soup Cake. Yes, really. And yes, it’s actually rather tasty. No, don’t ask me to explain the why of it here, the chemistry is complex and exhausting. 

BUT! 

The research bears out most each and every recipe ultimately featured here- they’re eminently defensible. Of the ones I couldn’t vouch for offhand, I even did some digging of my own to be sure. Each is introduced with an air of playful, generous fondness. All throughout this book, the recipes are portrayed as so much more than lists of ingredients and instructions. They’re comrades; they’re guides into myriad communities of all shapes and sizes as much as they’re tributes to those who came before and brought those recipes to the modern day one generation at a time. It’s a comprehensive collection that speaks to any number of cultural backgrounds, niche ingredients, and historical minutiae.

If I had a complaint about anything at all in this book, there’s really only one thing that jumps out... or, rather, shies away. For a book so massive, so bombastic in its method, pictures and prose, the text itself is what I found troublesome- the font’s just too damn small! Nearly every recipe fits neatly to a single page, and every last iota of additional space is chock-full of fantastic, brilliantly colorful, largely timeless photographs. While they absolutely do their job highlighting most every facet of every region of the US, I can’t help but wish for a few fewer photos and a larger, more legible font. Now I suppose that if you, like myself and many others, can hear Dylan reading the text aloud in your head as you peruse the thing, it’s going to be more than loud enough to make up the difference. The book’s story is told in no small part by the pictures- America is a bright, colorful, diverse, and VERY BUSY place. The endless array of excellent and nearly overwhelming photography works to emphasize precisely that, and does so while riding the edge of being gratuitous… but not going over.

So, to recap: gorgeous book, rock-solid concept, and superbly executed; but the font is small enough to make rapid read-throughs and referencing more difficult than a cookbook of this caliber ought to be. If you like the concept, the food, or the man himself, you’ll have a great time with Baking Across America. If you want fantastic photos, a plethora of well-researched history lessons, or even just a really pretty coffee table book, you’ll love it too.

I’ll recommend it without reservation.