cream wafers

Cream wafers may be the best cookie on earth. I have a hard time talking about cream wafers without getting philosophical. There is a question I often undertake with the baking mentors of my life. Right now, if you were given the choice of making the ten best cookies of your life over and over again vs. making every cookie you could conceive of without repeating ever, which would you choose? Tough, right? I would have to go with the ten best cookies over and over again. These cookies definitely factor into that answer. They are a huge pain in the ass to make. But I cannot imagine my life without the potential to make them whenever I feel so inspired. Never make these cookies for someone who may not appreciate them.



My list of top ten cookies:

cream wafers
almond macaroons
chocolate chip
soft gingersnaps
russian teacakes
almond lace cookies
shortbread
homemade oreos
pumpkin cookies
oatmeal raisin

*list subject to change
(and in hindsight, I feel deprived)

trader joe's

Today marks the second time that I have been inside a Trader Joe's. I love it. Somehow, when Trader Joe's arrived in Union Square in NYC, I picked up on some very negative sentiments and carried a secret resentment against Trader Joe's ever since. I don't know how it happened. I suppose an article in the Times about veterans of Whole Foods being worried about the impact. But it took only one recent foray down the aisles of the Madison, WI shop to change my mind. The dairy aisle would have sufficed.

All of my favorite cheeses for about half of their Minneapolis retail price. St. Andre Triple Cream for $5.99/lb. Say no more. My mind reeled with plans for all the dinner parties I would throw if only I lived within reach of a Trader Joe's. Then I saw this:


I have been a devotee of Fage for over a year now. Any longer and I would actually be broke. That's how expensive it is to keep up with a serious Fage habit. I'd fare better with a foie gras addiction, save for the bad goose karma. Trader Joe's greek style yogurt is about half the price of Fage and indistinguishable in taste and texture.

Today Jon and I ventured to the Minneapolis Trader Joe's. We had already biked to a place within 'a half mile' of it. That was Scotty's estimation. After a mile of walking, Jon informed me that Scotty is notoriously lax in estimating anything. My shoes were starting to feel tacky inside. Jon said he felt like he had been picked up and set down on the moon. I said we were definitely in Whatthefucksville. We laughed about it, thinking it was more sad than funny. Minneapolis is both those things, most of the time. Finally, a half mile after that, we reached the store. I bought cheeses and greek style yogurt and a 30-pack of E-mer-gen-C. Next time I'm taking the 12 bus.

the phone book's last stand

A sign of the times. Yesterday I saw this phone book flipping desperately in the rising wind. Someone had cast it off on top of a ten foot high pedestal. Phone books don't stand a chance. I have lived for two years without a phone book. Whenever the phonebooks get delivered to our apartment building, nobody takes them. They sit for weeks inside the front door. Later the landlord moves them to the laundry room. Still later he posts a somewhat threatening note next to them, as if we will only now realize their significance to us- having been threatened with the potential loss of them. That's the way our landlord operates. Passive aggressively. I'll photograph his new dumpster notice sometime to prove it. Jon has had his bike threatened on several occasions. A children's car seat left in the basement hallway was similarly attacked. I remember thinking to myself when we first were given a tour of our prospective apartment by Dana (yep, a man named Dana which turns out to be the mere beginning of his psychosis), 'It might be pretty cool to have an anal retentive landlord.'
And for the most part, it is pretty cool.

There have been moments in the last two years when I have wanted a phone book. In November, my sister wanted me to call the movie theatre to check out the movie times. I didn't have the number to the movie theatre. I also did not have internet access. She was aghast. When I explained to her my stance on phone books being totally passe, she was less than impressed. I argued that it only seemed backwards given the context. Weak. There was also a time in mid-February when the temperature was minus five degrees and I didn't have the number to the pizza place. Jon and I walked almost a mile to get there, then waited for 20 minutes while the pizzas cooked to walk them back home. The original plan had been delivery. I realize that these are piss-poor examples of why no one should have a phone book, but mark my words- the golden age of phone books is over.

my parents' dog

Living 2 hours from home with no car, I did not expect to make frequent trips home. But I have been traveling home fairly often lately. There are countless reasons why I like to visit home. My parents are each crazy in their separate ways. They welcome my own personal craziness with open arms. The house is big enough for me to be there without throwing anyone's game. Not that my parents are easily thrown. They have always been the sort to live and let live. One example- this one dredges up a few hard feelings with Jessica- is the time when Mom bought a new pick-up truck the day before Jessica's wedding. Since the wedding was held at my parents' house, Mom's absence at the precise moment when 20 dozen roses arrived via FedEx was duly noted. Now that Jessica has recently forgiven her for it, the whole episode serves as an appropriate example of my parents' uncanny ability to do their own thing.

I never thought I would say this- but I visit home in part to see my parents' dog. Its name is Muggles. It is certifiably looney tunes. I remember the moment I fell for Muggles. I was home for four weeks between moving from NYC to Minneapolis. My mom started school the week before I moved to Minneapolis, so she began waking up at the crack of dawn to get ready for work. When she left, she brought the dog into my bedroom and laid Muggles next to me. Muggles slept like a little angel by my side until I finally rolled out of bed. When I finally woke up, she just stared at me with her big bulgy eyes, looking for some kind of clue as to what she should do next. She's a heartbreaker. Not perfect, by any means. But such an endearing blend of lunacy and sweetness. Bad story but 100% true.

One of Muggles' favorite things to do is play on swings. She does this completely unprovoked. She will charge the dangling end of our rope swing and gain enough momentum to propel herself clear off the ground. She has lost a tooth doing so. Most of the time she undertakes this, there is no one around to witness it. We know because whenever we cannot find Muggles, we sneak to the backyard and find her there. Muggles is a French bulldog. She sleeps most of the day, then goes a.w.o.l on the rope swing. She also likes to battle the swingset.


Muggles is the only dog I know that eats whatever someone gives her. You could be eating a pickle and she'd eat the second half. That's a bad example because she loves pickles. Same with green apples. Vewy cwazy. That's what she thinks she is. Because she also has that knack for making people speak in babytalk. Humiliating but 100% true.

Sometimes I worry that a movie will be made about Muggles and her adventures and they will have someone like John Goodman do the voicework. Or even worse, Danny DeVito. The same way whoever spoke for Wilbur on the original Charlotte's Web ruined the whole movie. If Muggles ever tends towards advocacy, I'll make her the posterchild for Animals Against Bad Animal Voicework. There are things I feel more strongly about than bad animal voicework, but right now I can't think of any.

Lake Harriet

Things to see at Lake Harriet on a Thursday night:

a giant green caterpillar with red stripes and a green horn, two tiny baby squirrels the size of my thumb smushed on the walking path, a gorgeous tree with grooves in its bark inches deep, old couples riding side-by-side bikes, crazily well-dressed eccentric men riding bicycles to the string trio concert in the bandshell, middle school girls making up dances to the concert music, joggers everywhere, lots of cellulite, poor choices in the sock/shoe department, too much spandex, too much manflesh...

Sometimes all I have to cling to is the hope that the Midwest is the embodiment of people being themselves.

tiny little things

Jon's toothbrush has a head that can be replaced. Maybe if my teeth weren't so holy I could say the same for myself. I use an electric. I have to make up ground elsewhere. Sometimes I go to the bathroom with the lights off to settle the score.


Jon also buys these biodegradable sponges. They drive me bonkers, but I do feel a small sense of satisfaction watching them visibly deteriorate before my eyes.

There is a mindset that little things don't make a big enough difference to save the world. I can understand the instinct. Sometimes I fill a canvas bag with groceries and think how futile the act is, in and of itself. It is small and insignificant. But imagine the truckload of bags delivered to the grocery store every week. Imagine that truckload being rendered obsolete by the simple act of people bringing their own bags to the store with them. Imagine the factories that make the billions of bags we mindlessly use every year being shut down. We are conditioned to think of factories shutting down as a bad thing. We are conditioned to think of a lot of things. The biggest danger that we face today is allowing ourselves to be conditioned to think a certain way. My challenge to you is this- think of one thing you do every day. Brush your teeth, wash your hair, shop for groceries, go to work. Anything. Take that one thing and try to do it in such a way that it does less harm. For example, think of washing your hair. Use an earth-friendly shampoo. Wash your hair every other day instead of daily. Turn the water off while you scrub your head. Use your towel for a week before washing it. Refill your shampoo bottle from a bulk container at a neighborhood co-op. Those are 5 ways to wash your hair in a way that does less harm. 5 ways to better one very simple act. And I am by no means an expert. Some of these changes are harder to make than others. Everyone needs to find changes that work for them. It doesn't help to think of these changes as a punishment doled out to us now that the world is falling to shit. Lifestyle is a choice. Be empowered by it.

meth mouth

This is one of my sister's favorite nicknames for me.

I have a tooth fixation that is disabling. I spend almost one hour of every day running my tongue over various imperfections in my teeth, believing them to be even more imperfect than the day before and believing further that a thorough excavation of my whole mouth via my own tongue will reveal whether or not this is true. Every day I convince myself that I am one day closer to placing my hand to my mouth and having it inadvertently filled with teeth. When I visit the dentist, I limit the number of questions I allow myself to ask her. I am fairly certain that asking as many questions as occur to me would lead to a direct referral to a therapist. If any percentage of people feel like I do about their teeth, dentists would be well-advised to partner with therapists. Tooth anxiety is like most other anxieties in that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I worry about my teeth a lot, hence I grind them when I sleep, hence they wear down and fillings pop out, hence I have even more reasons to worry about my teeth a lot... Kind of like social anxiety- you worry about people laughing at you all the time, hence you avoid social situations, hence you become totally socially inept, hence people laugh at you all the time. Also like financial anxiety- you worry about your financial stability, hence you act out by buying expensive stuff you don't need to prove your ability to do so, hence you have no financial stability. Also like mold anxiety. If you worry about finding mold everywhere...you know the routine. This works for spiders, too.

Today part of one of my fillings went m.i.a. It didn't just chip off or fall out. A perfect hole appeared in it, as if it had been drilled through by my worried little tongue. It was right after a gas station pit stop in which I had returned a V-8 Spicy Hot veggie drink to the cooler in favor of a yellow cupcake-flavored cappuccino drink. Like some higher power had sent a carefully aimed mini-bolt of lightning straight into my molar to teach me a lesson in not drinking synthetic vended beverages from styrofoam containers. I've spent most of the day since then trying to trace the root of my teeth issues to eating too many carrots. I guess it makes me feel less guilty about an entire college career spent drinking diet mountain dew in the wee hours of the morning until I fell asleep on spiral bound notebooks. Not to mention six months spent in Ireland with a complete lack of fluoridated water. Months in which, coincidentally, I rarely went anywhere without a piece of candy burning a hole in my pocket. (pocket = tooth)

I love my sister for many reasons. Just when I start getting all out of mind about a piece of missing fake tooth, she reminds me that things could be so much worse. I could have a whole mouth full of twisted, sponge-a-lin, darkly hued teeth that share the uncanny ability of silly putty to take on the shape of whatever last came in contact with them.
I am meth mouth- see me smile.

On that note, please check out a truly entertaining blog. Saipua. This blog is the handi-work of the owner of a soap shop by the same name in Red Hook Brooklyn. Check out the blog. If I spent as much time on Sarah's blog as I do prodding my teeth every day- I would be a much happier person. Jon and I have a cameo on the toothy photo ending her 2/27 entry. Warning: totally graphic

potato salad champion

When I think of the Fourth of July, I think potato salad. I also think fireworks, but as I am nowhere near winning a firework building contest between me and my two sisters- I hardly think it worth mentioning. I won a potato salad improv contest held at the Polzin house last weekend. It wasn't a premeditated event. It was prompted by an extremely mayo-friendly batch of potato salad that mom whipped up to the tune of about 50 servings. Jessica could not palate it. She also could not keep that fact to herself. We all agreed that it probably couldn't hurt to adulterate it and hope for the best. So I suggested a contest. Ballsy, to say the least- given that I cannot hold a candle to my sisters' work in the kitchen. The rules were simple. Add anything you can find in the kitchen. Rinsing off the existing mayo and adding more potatoes were not allowed. I didn't stand a chance with a strategy of culinary integrity. I had no choice but to take the route of complete irreverence and hope for the best. Here is my winning recipe. It sounds disgusting, but is surprisingly good.

8 servings potato salad w/ heavy mayo
add the following to taste:
Famous Dave's BBQ sauce
curry powder
chili powder
apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper
craisins, roughly chopped
garnish with toasted, salted walnuts


Jessica added a lot of vinegar, several varieties of olives, fennel seed, salt and pepper, wilted spinach (intentionally so), green pepper and a wealth of other stuff


Jamie added sweet corn, chili beans, chili powder, salt and pepper, etc. The edible flowers were a nice touch.


Hey, babes- we're all winners. (but there's only one champion)