Monday: Baking February 20, 2007

Today was Monday, one of two days of the week that I spend with Baby-G, my 19-month-old partner in crime. Baby-G and I have been spending time together since August, and he has quickly become one of my favorite friends in our nation’s capital. Although he has accosted many a stranger with his near-hysterical friendliness, I like to think he harbors a certain love for me. I am certainly fond of him, and with good reason. To start with, he graciously allows me to spend time in his large and well appointed suburban home, eating his foods, blasting vicious indie rock on his state-of-the-art stereo system and chop chop chopping veggies with his full set of razor-sharp Wusthof knives. When he is feeling especially generous, I am also allowed to cuddle with him.

More importantly, Baby-G posses all of the qualities I find most essential in a dear friend: he is a born communicator, has excellent social skills, tries very hard to be kind and is of diverse interests. It might also be worth noting that he posseses another quality that, while not among my foremost criteria, is shared by almost all my friends: he is very, very cute.

It’s a good thing he’s cute too, because he passed several hours of today in a snit such as you really can’t imagine, unconsolable except by the most random and unpredictable measures:

You want a hug? No.

A drink of water? No.

To read a book? Absolutley not.

Uhhhh, this filthy spatula? What took you so long?!

Hystrionics passed, it really is nice to sit down with a cute boy and a snack, and we happened to have prepared just the thing earlier in the morning. Monday is baking day for Baby-G and I (Thursday is Montgomery County Thrift Store And Destruction of Barnes and Noble Kids Department Day), and when we found Patricia Wells‘ cunning recipe for olive oil brioche, we were so immediatley seduced that we almost forgot how utterly uppity, bourgie, obnoxious and self congratulatory that fucking book is. This woman is a smug sandwich on smug bread:

I have a house in France!

I like to roast whole cod in a sea salt crust!

I host charming, effortless dinners for forty featuring wild squab that I slow-cook in my handbuilt outdoor woodburning oven over grape-vine charcoal because I am independently wealthy and spend all of my time ‘cooking’ and by cooking I mean fetishizing my peasant neighbors!

Never mind that every recipe we’ve ever made from her book tastes ambrosial, she really gets on our nerves. Baby-G stuck it to her just before nap by detroying the dust cover with his teeth.

Sadly, this brioche recipe was no exception to the rule– it was both easy and delicious. Damn her. After a quick jaunt to our favorite co-op, an akward incedent involving the Ergo and my exposed buttcrack, a graham cracker break and a diaper change, we divided our dough into two portions, mixing one with chopped parano cheese and dried dill, the other with chopped crystalized ginger. After the rise, during which we both napped, we formed our dough into tiny rolls, filling the ginger batch with a few squares of Green and Black Maya Gold chocolate per each.

I’ll post this recipe soon, because both varieties where totally killer. I would have liked to have maybe substituted a quarter wheat flour in the cheese batch for some added complexity and health blah blah blah but I didn’t think to do it. The co-op sells local Spring Mill wheat flour in bulk, which means those of us in the know can bake bread and revolutionize the ecomony at the same time. Now we’ve just got to set the DC area up with its own version of the Plenty. SO hot right now!

The fruits of our labor were quickly gobbled up by my evening class, and now I find my self in the library, smacking my lips and gearing up for a metro ride home. If I get home before 11 I will allow myself to watch the DVD special features for Saved while enjoying this amazing tea from my homestate. If I get home after eleven, I will probably still allow myself to watch the movie and drink the tea. We’ll see.

As for Baby-G, he’s back with his familial handlers now, but if he’s smart he’s resting up for Thursday because we are SO hitting the thrift store early. All the old ladies there love us (they give him free toys and call me “the cutest nanny I’ve ever seen”) and it’s the ONLY place in town to buy 35 cent sambuca glasses. Tally-ho!