Bargain Apple Turnovers

My broke ass has been shopping on the cheap ever since I can remember. Hunting through a store for the best deal is something I learned at my grandparents' knees. A Great Depression isn't something one is apt to forget, and I learned those lessons well from their stories about how far a dollar can stretch if one is savvy enough to do it well.

It almost goes without saying that we love food in this town. We have an incredible abundance practically on our doorsteps, prepared by the finest cooks the world has to offer. But that doesn't mean I pay through the nose for it. Oh, I love going out occasionally to savor the slowness of an osso bucco that's been simmering on a back burner for days, made by someone else because I don't have time to prep a meal like that, but I learned how to find food and cook it a long time ago, whether times are lean or fat.

And so I do. When my local store had their brand name biscuits on sale, I bought them in bulk. After my autumn apple adventures began (as detailed here: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-doctor-is-in.html ), I hit that bag hard. Combining apples with pastry for dessert or breakfast is as easy as pie. Buy that tin of biscuits, you know the ones you carefully pop open along the line on the cardboard tube that's been vacuum-sealed like a friggin' MacGyver bomb that explodes scarily and randomly on contact with the edge of the spoon? Yeah, those.

Fill them with a mixture of apples cooked with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, like the topping we've already covered here on this blog (see link above). Got it? Good. Fold 'em over and crimp them, poke some air holes on the tops so they don't explode like said MacGyver bomb, melt some butter and baste the tops to get golden brown tops. Part of the charm of homemade tarts like these is that they don't look perfect and choosing them based on their shapes is part of the fun. "I'll eat the fucked up looking one first and save the best-looking one for last!" That's how I do it, savoring the sweetness.

When I'm not in training for the sport of MMA, I revert back to my more typical feast or famine mode, like the beastie I am. I can go hours without thinking about food when I'm working on my art, stopping to eat only when my appetite is triggered by someone else's cooking smells, like those from an open window of the apartment next door or the wafting aromas as I climb the stairs past a neighbor's apartment, as it so often happens in the tight city quarters that comprise our communal living style. Or I'll go so long as to actually hear my stomach angrily rumble—then I have to stop working and feed.

We've touched on my Italian-American heritage here on this blog before, as it breaks down mathematically into one very simple easy equation: food=love. I do not understand the sicknesses behind eating disorders, though I do get that it is comprised of certain key factors like a feeling of helplessness that needs to assuaged by a sense of control, but as empathetic as I am, I do not turn away from succulent abundances when I am starving. I do not understand the human creature who cannot or will not eat my grandmother's recipes for meatballs and sauce and macaroni. To this human computer, it does not compute.

So it is with an utter lack of shame that I can relate to all of you now, that on a certain day captured here in photos, somewhere between the hours of 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., I ate an entire batch of apple turnovers that I made, siting down to my repast in white karate pants and black plastic dojo sandals, eating them pleasurably one by one. I ate them all, dear readers. I ate them all. 
 

Raging Against Machines

In Tech Land, we have a concept called "Intuitive", which means that the user should be able to figure out how to accomplish computer actions through reason and deduction. It's also called an "Ideal", but of course reality is quite another state of being.

This morning I wanted to put some photos onto my iPhone from my home computers' desktop. For most Mac actions, our tools, devices, and interfaces employ a sophisticated, tight type of coding called "Drag and Drop". You see where you would like your items to be, you click on the item (either individually or as folders), and you drag them there.

It mimics the same type of hand and eye coordination humans have developed through evolution. Now that PC usage (which stands for "personal computing") has spread to the masses through lower end devices like Dells and cheap overseas laptops, you get what you pay for: less zeros and ones, the codified language that mitigates every action you take on a computer.

That's why cheap computers and software are more prone to hacking. Believe me, I am no acolyte to either camp nor paid endorser: I'm simply an artist who uses the system and tools designed for my type of work, which makes me a Mac user. And I know the difference between the types of devices. They are coming closer together every day, but sometimes I still fall right into the gap that separates the masses from the expert.

So, when I went to drag some photos from my desktop to my iPhone and I could not perform such a simple action, I knew "fuckery" was involved. I launched iTunes, explored all the sub menus, and I still could not intuit the action. That means my creative thinking stops, I stop what I am doing, and I now have to problem-solve like an IT support person, only without the Indian accent and time zone delays.


For an expert, heavy user like myself, non-intuitive actions signify two things: 1) that these tools have been watered down for the masses, and 2) that PC thinking is required, none of which I encounter daily. You see, the more intensive the coding, the higher the concentration of zeros and ones, the more complicated the interfaces and tools are, which means when stuff shits the bed, the tougher a problem it is to solve. The tighter the coding, the more time and money was invested in research and development.

As a Mac user, I don't mind servicing easy tech problems because I use those portions of my brain frequently, but you do not. I then do what any lay person does—I "googled" a query looking for a solution. This is a relatively easy problem to for me solve, and find the answer I did, in the form of a simple instructional video produced and narrated by a techie. As a publishing pro, I have the crushing weight of deadlines on me constantly while looking at a clock, frequently with people standing by my shoulder breathing their hot breath on the back of my neck. Sound scary? The last non-creative I involved in my work flow had trouble sleeping and experienced heart palpitations. Welcome to our world.

To my sheer delight, I found a PC user online who hit the same roadblock, producing a stream of invectives against Apple computing that made my heart sing. Of course, he's wrong—its actually the dumbness of involving a larger group of less educated people into what was once a rare type of computing that is now a coding and way of computing between devices that's outsourced overseas and slapped together to the keep up with demand of mass production, but I loved the spirit of his angst.

"Why can't I just do this now when I want to?" It's so childish, so basic to human nature that it always snaps reality into perspective for me. For those of you who think we will become enslaved to machines like some crazily paranoid SciFi novel, be rest assured: it's still as dumb as your fucking neighbor and co-worker, you just have to dig a little deeper to find it.

Now I have those photos back on my iPhone where they belong (I took snap shots of the sign that shows the working hours for my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library) and now I have the Power of Grayskull back in my hands, plus this gem of a screen shot to share. Enjoy and revel in the awesome pleasure of raging against stupid machines.

Kitchen Mission Accomplished

Dear Readers, 

This morning, I woke up late
(for me) and like many of you,
I found myself without instant coffee. I'd offered my coffeemaker machine to the street gods years ago. In Brooklyn, that means you leave something on the sidewalk in front of your dwelling, and it magically disappears. It was a counter hog in my mostly counter-less kitchen anyway, plus I'm not typically a big caffeine drinker, for health reasons.

And yet, today herbal tea was clearly not going to cut it.
On the tippy top shelf, I remembered I might have some grounds for brewing purposes.
I stood on a chair and fished out a container from among the upper recesses. By now, you know how we roll in this town: what we lack in square footage, we gain in ceiling height, which makes the highest cabinets in my kitchen a sort of uncharted and forgotten territory that I rarely visit.

The stove clock is still set on Spring time. Doh! Actual time of experiment: 7:48 a.m

I am happy to report, I "MacGyvered" a cup of coffee from a container that had a "best used by" date of 2008, utilizing two paper towels as a filter, and a plastic to-go container as a stand-in for the coffee pot. Obviously, unbleached and organic paper towels would be the best choice for this experiment. It takes a bit of patience to slowly pour hot water onto the grounds in intervals, allowing sufficient time for the water to drip through without incident, but in the end, it was totally worth it. I secured a freshly brewed cup of coffee. Just don't tell my doctor it wasn't decaf. 

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention.html