Everybody doesn’t like something

Another day, another recall. On the tail of recalls affecting Thomas the Tank Engine wooden trains and Castleberry Chili (should we be concerned that pet food ran off the same line as the chili? Or that some of the product is over two years old?), we now have Sara Lee (nobody doesn’t like her, remember?) recalling bread that may contain bits of metal that broke off a sifter.

I am compelled to click through to the Sara Lee site to get the corporate take on this. I’m especially curious because I’ve never been the least bit tempted to sift flour when making bread. Granted, I use mostly whole grain flour for my breadmaking, but even when baking using cake flour, I don’t sift: I whisk to mix ingredients. It’s much more efficient, and helps the dry ingredients absorb the moist ones more evenly. And that’s not just an old wives’ technique, there are a couple of published studies out there that prove it.

So I click away, to Sara Lee land, which proudly exclaims, “Our mission is to simply delight you… every day.” The illustrations are of two women, obviously great friends, enjoying a cup of tea together on a sunny day, a freckled kid eating a hot dog with mustard artistically squeezed on it, a Douwe Egbert coffee machine, a loaf of Sara Lee Soft & Smooth whole grain white bread, and an Ambi Pur 90-day plug-in air freshener.

I know I’m not a typical housewife, but none of these images delight me: the women are obviously having a great time with their Douwe Egbert tea, but seeing the name reminds me of the hundreds of tins of Douwe Egbert Amphora pipe tobacco that my father burned up coating his lungs with black gunk. I dig a bit and discover that Sara Lee sold off the tobacco division in 1998, a full 20 years after it acquired the Dutch brand.

The other brand, Ambi Pur, is one I have never heard of, but I readily admit that I have never bought air freshener. My idea of fresh air is the stuff you get when you open the window, and I think that a kitchen that smells of cooking is a good thing. In spite of the studies linking the usage of highly scented products to increased asthma attacks, Sara Lee boldly states that its Ambi Pur products actually improve “the quality of air in the home.” I am delighted that the report on the hazards of household cleaners issued by Women and Environment has garnered a good deal of press, but am less than delighted to note that Ambi Pur products are being marketed in over 30 countries. Having increased asthma levels by 160% in this country, it seems we’re off the conquer the world.

But back to what brought us here: our daily bread. It is an unfortunate choice for the flash animation that fills the home page for the company, but it’s probably too expensive to slip a different image in, and the company is probably hoping it will blow over soon. And it probably will, because it is of limited scope. Well, limited in the context of the American food distribution system. The affected bread comes from a single plant in Mississippi, and was only shipped to “the entire states of Mississippi and Alabama, most of Arkansas, far southeastern Missouri, western Georgia, southwestern Tennessee, southeastern Louisiana and the panhandle of Florida.” This may sound like it's pretty far-reaching, but it’s relatively localized—think of how far and wide the tainted spinach of last summer spread.

The complexity compounds when I start reading the list of products. Of the 27 products affected by the recall, only seven are Sara Lee brand. Products include such wholesome-sounding loaves as Earthgrains 100% Natural Wheat Berry and Golden Bake Wheat Bread, as well as store brands for IGA and Piggly-Wiggly. I chuckle at the name “Shurfresh Split Top Wheat," which has a two week window on freshness.

However, I am concerned that the AP article I read makes mention of only two of the off-brand products. If someone reads the article and assumes they are safe because they bought Piggly-Wiggly Wheat bread instead of Sara Lee; if they do not bother to find the producer’s site and wade through the press release, they will be none the wiser.

Once again, protecting ourselves and our families boils down to knowing the source of our food, and buying locally. Bread, when we buy it instead of baking it ourselves, comes from the shelf at the co-op: We usually reach for the locally baked Old Mill Bread spelt sandwich loaf and crusty loaves from The Essential Baking Company over in Fremont, which makes a rosemary diamante that was destined to hold up a piece of brie. I am particularly fond of the notion their name implies, that essentials include things like pain au chocolat and chocolate chip cookies. Oh, and their loaves, like mine, are made by hand using organic ingredients.

Perfect

July is racing to a close, and I am pedalling furiously to keep up. The culminating Marrowstone in the City concert for Number One Son is this evening, Little One has a sleepover, and tomorrow is that yearly debauchery otherwise known as the Microsoft Picnic. Sunday we “relax” by going clamming, and we might even be able to do nothing that evening by watching The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the park. I don’t think we’ll be able to squeeze in a leisurely stroll through the Bellevue Arts Fair or kick back and watch the hydro races, though. We might catch the brides one more time before they fly back to Switzerland, but even if we don’t, we’ll have some sweet memories.

For it was the absolutely most perfect wedding I have ever been to. No pretenses, only pure, unbridled joy. There were oodles of children, resplendent in summer dresses, clip-on ties, and keens. The brides’ two daughters and two nieces created a path of rose petals, a string trio played the Wedding March, and, after toasts were made with champagne and the cake was cut, they danced a slow waltz together. Hopeless romantics dabbed their eyes.

But it wasn’t a wedding. Because legally, the brides, who have been together nearly as long as me and my Darling Husband and who have grown their family in parallel, were not getting married. Rather, they were celebrating the civil union that they registered in Switzerland on Valentine’s Day of this year. There were numerous mentions of the irony of an American lawyer having to go overseas to marry, but the fact remains that this was a great wedding party: the brides, still very much in love, weren’t twenty and had had plenty of time to think about what they wanted in a wedding. And what they decided was that family came first, both their own and those of their friends. No one needed to hire a sitter to come to this event, we all brought them with—and they nearly outnumbered us. There were buttered noodles in the buffet (along with more adult roasted potatoes and asparagus, broiled salmon and a tasty organic greens salad put together by Tuxedos and Tennis Shoes), an entire room was set aside for kids with coloring, hula hoops and games, and an ice cream truck stopped by just when nerves were getting ragged. With meltdowns averted, at least for now, parents packed up their sticky children and headed home. We returned home thoroughly content at how things turned out.

The Saturday before the wedding was a different story altogether. With some of the muggiest weather I’ve ever sweated through, I had set to baking on Friday afternoon, turning out a handsome enough pair of 9” layers. As they cooled, though, the middle of one layer collapsed. No matter, I said to myself, I can bake a new one tomorrow. With the kids in bed, I tucked a 12” cake into the oven. It came out heavy, refusing to rise more than a quarter inch. Not good.

Saturday was supposed to be an easy day: I only had to bake the little 6” topper (in génoise, the brides’ first choice) and an extra 12” (for the kitchen, a bit of slight-of-hand that magically produces plates of cut cake within minutes of the ceremonial cutting). The big layers did a repeat non-performance, barely budging upwards. But the little six-inch cake, destined for the aptly-named bridal suite at the Salish Lodge, puffed up perfectly, and made me wonder just what I was doing wrong with the supposedly easier butter cake. I reviewed Rose’s prose, checked my math, and tried the big butter cake again, this time using a bit more batter. Still domed, still dense and just plain heavy. Not at all what I had in mind.

By this time, my family had been relegated to eating at the little kids table in the corner, as our normal table was covered with an expanding collection of failed layers, not to mention having to tiptoe around an increasingly edgy chef. Darling Husband earned years of brownie points by not only washing up after each failure, but not complaining about it at all. But I clearly needed some perspective. So, I curled up and read, not a cookbook, but Hunting and Gathering, a novel I’d been sipping all week. There’s an intense scene where the protagnist sits at her easel and begins a pastel nude. She picks up the blue pastel, but after a few strokes she stops and changes to red: the subject demanded it. I tuck in my bookmark and head back to the store for more eggs and cream (to assuage the nightmares about not having enough cream to cover the cake).

And so I do what the brides wanted all along. I bake three more cakes, all génoise this time, enough for a beautiful three-tiered wedding cake—for all the little girls to dream and wonder about—and one more 12” cake for the inevitable second helpings.

The day of the wedding—sorry, the celebration—dawned even muggier, and I changed my worrying to the cream. If I felt like I needed a shower after the effort of getting dressed, how must the cake feel, having to stand there, smiling and looking pretty for three hours? As it turns out, I had nothing to worry about, for it was, as I mentioned before, a perfect wedding.

(photo by Cory Parris)

And no, there were no leftovers—unless you count the four butter cakes in my fridge, covered in all that extra cream.

Happy dirt

I nearly ran to the garden this muggy afternoon, anxious to see what the rains have wrought. A couple of huge slugs, to be sure, but then I saw the peas! Those lovely shelling peas that we smuggled in from Ireland are in full glory, enjoying the damp, cloudy days. The two dozen pods I pick aren’t enough for a whole plate of peas, but they combine well with some leftover baby carrots from the next valley over for the classic peas and carrots dish. A dot of butter will insure they disappear.

I turn to the rows of potatoes, and choose the one marked “Misc. Pots.” It’s the garden equivalent of Google’s “I’m felling lucky” button, odd potatoes that didn't fit in the red, yellow or russet categories. My pitchfork turns over handfuls of little golden fingerling potatoes. I am feeling very lucky indeed.

This is the time of Darling Husband’s home town festival, Rutenfest. Today would have been the culmination of the festival, with drummers noisily filling every corner of town, and just about every school kid dressed up to take part in the big parade. Germans grow misty-eyed about these things, so to make him feel better we throw some sausage in the pan, and hang the city’s big blue and white banner out front. There’s even a commemorative glass at his place to remind him of home and welcome him home.