I think you may be getting the wrong idea about me. See, I blog so much about cupcakes, but in fact I’ve never baked a single cupcake in my whole life. On the other hand, have I ever mentioned popovers here, even once? (Maybe once. Yes, once.) Yet the number of popovers to have popped out of my oven is beyond reckoning. & maybe, reading this, you think: Indigo is a Popover Goddess! or at least a Popover Expert. Again you would be misguided, because my popover experience has been haphazard & inconsistent. Of my last five batches of popovers, one was a miserable, airless, custardy failure, & one was just okay. The others were fabulous, but 3 out of 5 is not exactly Popover Reliability, is it?

Here is someone who takes popovers seriously; next time I will try her method & see what happens. Although, scientifically speaking, I suppose I should try her method the next 5 times & see if more than 3 batches come out well.

It’s so nice to live in a college town. For one thing, you get college radio. Where else but on KALX would I have heard BlueKomet’s “San Antone” at exactly the right moment? I was just a couple minutes early for an appointment as I parked the car. Such a quiet, sunny Berkeley street. I kept the radio on & sat in the warm car until the song ended. Good to know old-fashioned radio magic can still happen in these techy times.

I am so pleased with my thumb today. It looks so un-fat. Healthy wrinkles of all kinds abound—from the deep creases at the joint to the fine network of ittybitty wrinkles that characterize normal finger skin. I would go so far as to say my right thumb actually looks almost the same as my left thumb! We have come far from the fat thumb days, my thumb & I. We’ve been braving all kinds of new adventures. Last night we sliced up a cauliflower, carefully applying lessons learned from the cabbage-cutting incident. Flexibility is key. If the knife gets stuck part way, change the angle a bit, move around on the knife handle & try a slightly different position. What might have been one continuous motion for a regular-strength hand turned into a somewhat wiggly series of several small motions for my weak hand, but in the end I got what I wanted: a nicely halved cauliflower. (The slices that come next are not as difficult because you’re not going through the dense, hard center of the stem.)

We also tried driving a little ways up a curvy hill street in Kensington, which wasn’t too bad, but I was glad not to have to go any further. Then yesterday, feeling extra brave, I let my left hand turn the mouse over to the right hand for a few experimental clicks. Pretty exciting stuff!

By the way, you can thank Textism’s Textile for the lovely em-dashes, smart apostrophes & other treats that finally allow this posting—& all future postings, I hope—to look decent, upstanding, & typographically correct. At long last! Hallelujah!

It’s been a little while. The hand has made it clear that I shouldn’t have cut that big cabbage in half last week while making Orangette’s braised cabbage, but I have to say, it was almost worth it. Next time I’ll have Donna make that first cut, & next time is coming soon, because this cabbage was divinely comforting. Gas bills be damned, hot food pulled from the oven is infinitely more winter-perfect to me than almost anything you could do on the stovetop. Fortunately I was not stupid enough to attempt hefting the six-ton Le Creuset roasting dish in & out of the oven.

I had Donna repeat her weight-lifting last night for my first-ever macaroni & cheese. Wow, what a revelation! I’d never made mac & cheese before—unless you count Annie’s, which you shouldn’t, I mean I really don’t know why these two things are called by the same name—but, whatever. Not only have I never made it myself, I realized I’ve never eaten homemade mac & cheese from anybody anywhere. There was some kind of invisible, unconscious boundary between Outside & Inside; mac & cheese belonged to the Outside world of cafeterias & restaurants. It seems my friends & relatives all share in this division. Weird!

Until now! (Fanfare please….) I recently read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which among other things contains a detailed & mesmerizing description of a woman making macaroni & cheese. I happened to be very hungry while reading this section & instantly developed a serious jones for the rich stuff. Even then, though, it did not occurr to me to make it myself; instead I remembered that a friend had raved about the mac & cheese at a nearby deli, so vowed to go asap to satisfy my craving.

I couldn’t get there until yesterday; I was on the verge of buying a large hunk of it when Donna pointed out, “hey, it’s $7.49 a pound, why don’t we just make our own?” Oh. Duh. Of course. So, organic cheddar in hand, we walked on home & she hauled out the anvil Le Creuset.

My! What a tactile treat for the hands! First of all, the best way to butter a baking dish is with your fingers. Whee, fingerpainting! Then there’s spreading out the macaroni—your fingers are already all buttery, so why not just use your hands to pat the warm, squishy pasta into a level layer? Cool, fatty shredded cheese comes next, then another layer of al dente goodness. More cheese, then the roux. Wait! I must rant about roux: it’s been years since I made a roux. I don’t know why I have deprived myself in this horrible way, because the roux is pleasurable kitchen magic at its best. A little lump of butter melting in the pan, a little flour, whisk whisk whisk, pour in the innocent milk, whisk whisk & then poof! the most velvety, creamy, yummy, fragrant stuff you could ever lick off a whisk. (Okay, so maybe hot fudge sauce is good for that too.)

Anyway, the mac & cheese was bubbly & crusty & gooey. I consider my itch well scratched.

Now I’m going to disappear for a while more. Karen is coming to visit from Chicago.

Holy cupcakes! You know that other cupcake blog I mentioned? It is mere cupcake frivolity, my friends. Those people may be into cupcakes, but they are total lightweights compared to what I just found. This is the one! My jaw dropped lower & lower as I read through the recipes. Girl is out. of. control. She is obviously the Queen of Cupcakes! Seriously. I bow before her Cupcake Greatness. I'm really not the stalking type, but I admit the thought crossed my mind when I noticed she lives in San Francisco. Indigo Som, cupcake stalker. Can't you just see it?

If I had mo betta use of my hand, I would go ahead & get a life already, perhaps starting with baking my own damn cupcakes, but here I am in this strange limbo while my hand improves at a brisk, but never brisk enough, pace. It's sort of weird. I can now do enough things in a normal way (such as brushing my teeth) that I get lulled into this false sense that it's time to carry on with normal life now, when in fact my hand is still nowhere near normal. It's sort of a glass half full/glass half empty conundrum; I'm so happy that there's any water in the glass at all that I actually forget there's still a ton of room left for improvement.

& then I wonder why I'm having cupcake stalking thoughts.

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So. You wanna know how the hand is doing? It's getting a little cocky. This is good because it means there is something to be cocky about, but, of course, bad because of the risk of reinjury. Nevertheless I have done the unthinkable & joined Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics. I was inspired by her friend who'd had to quit knitting because of arthritis but is going to knit one stitch a day for the Olympics. I thought, hey, I can do that too! So every day I'm going to knit one cable repeat (approx. 23 stitches) on the hat I had to abandon when I screwed up my hand.

Knit bloggers are so wacky. They're coming up with all these crazy buttons, like for USA Cable Team or Canadian Sock Team. Lo & behold, someone made a button for my team:

Happy Year of the Dog! I am so glad to see that damned Chicken go, I can't even tell you. I was wondering, have chickens always disagreed with me so? I don't remember having a particularly tough year 12 years ago. 24 years ago did pretty much suck, but that can be blamed on the ever-angsty adolescent years. Let's just say this last year was the Chicken From Hell & let it go at that.

The Dog has brought this very exciting piece of progress: you know how you use your thumb as a guide to peel a piece of fruit? That was me this morning, doing that totally thumb-oriented process on an Asian pear! I couldn't believe myself, but it was real! I couldn't do the whole pear, only a couple slices' worth, but that was thrill enough for me.

In preparation for the Dog I also attempted to vaccuum my studio. I managed to get about 75% of the way through before my hand pooped out. Pretty good, huh?

I can almost dare to imagine that soon I'll be blogging about something besides my hand problems.... Chinese restaurants??! Knitting?!

Seems we are in the midst of an explosion in cupcake consciousness, or at least cupcake obsession. There's even a cupcake blog. The first inkling I had of the cupcake comeback (did they ever go away?) was Stephanie Brooks' very excellent conceptual cupcake installation in 2002.

A large part of cupcakes' appeal lies in the pleasing word "cupcake" itself. Would we be nearly so obsessed if they were called mini-cakes, personal cakes, individual cakes, or frosted muffins? I seriously doubt it.

The thumb likes cupcakes. The thumb has progressed quite remarkably & can now turn on the car ignition (I'd been reaching around with my left hand in an awkward contortion), cut chard, & lift a bottle of olive oil. Impressive, no?

Nail clipping victory!!! I went & bought a new nailclipper, realizing that the one I had must be dull since I literally can't remember ever having any other one. I mean this thing had to be at least 25 years old. Duh! The new one was $1.99, made in Korea, & noticeably easier to use when I tried it out with my left hand. Thus encouraged, I carefully, cautiously took it between right thumb & fingers, breathed deeply, gave it a few experimental squeezes, & then, oh glory! I clipped one nail on my left hand! This was a bit scary & produced a small twinge in the infamous thumb joint, so I stopped there for the time being. A couple days letter my hand felt much better & I tried it again. This time I cut all 5 nails on my left hand! Wheee! Cowabunga! Look out world!

Bay folks know that the size of San Francisco Bay has shrunk considerably over the years, but nobody ever seems to know where the original edge of the bay was, especially when discussing topics near & dear to our hearts, such as earthquakes, liquefaction, foundation & drainage problems, or just real estate in general. Recently the question arose, yet again, as it periodically does: when the Big One comes & all the landfill falls back into the bay, will our house fall with it, or will we be teetering on the edge, or will we be sitting snug as a bug, a convenient couple of blocks from the new beach? This cool 1899 map probably does not exactly answer the question, but it sure is fun to look at.

If you know where to find a map of the original bay, please do let me know. Best would be a comparitive illustration with, say, the new bay-as-we-know-it superimposed or something. So we can know once & for all, where is landfill & where is not?

Thumb update: sometimes eating with my right hand now! Able to write semi-legibly with skinnier pens! (I had been totally dependent on the lifesaving retractable Sharpie.) Used an Xacto to cut a piece of paper the other day! Still can't use that nailclipper though.

We were planning on having our usual Jewish Christmas, Chinese food & a movie, but there's a lot of leftovers in the fridge & it's pouring rain outside. We shall see if we make it out of the house....

I almost always prefer author interviews to movie star interviews. From the fabulous Annie Proulx comes this remark: "Excuse me, but it is NOT a story about 'two cowboys.' It is a story about two inarticulate, confused Wyoming ranch kids in 1963 who have left home and who find themselves in a personal sexual situation they did not expect, understand nor can manage."

I see your point, Annie. If you're actually a cowboy or actually know actual cowboys, then no, these guys are not cowboys. But for the rest of us... c'mon, close enough, they're cowboys, okay? Even Texan mineworkers in Wyoming looked like cowboys to my uncowboy eye.

I have not seen the movie yet. I'm almost afraid that I will be disappointed, although there is not even a whiff of evidence to support this fear. It's just so very made-to-order, like "Let's make a movie that Indigo will love!" I mean, it's too good to be true: Annie Proulx meets Ang Lee meets gay cowboys in Wyoming. Plus, you know I always love those tragic love stories. (Who doesn't?)

We shall see.

In other news: thumb progress! I have successfully cut my toenails (with nail scissors), chopped celery (not very finely, but still), carried various items heavier than a loaf of bread in my right hand, & even managed to slice some bread (although that may have been pushing things a bit).

I still can't really drive or use a fingernail clipper (I tried) or scrub pots or swim normally, but hey, optimism is my middle name.

So, you know, the silver lining in not being able to drive barely at all (because of the hand, of course) is that I get to feel all virtuous taking public transit all over the place. How liberating, too, to forget about gas prices, bridge tolls, parking tickets.... Not so fast! I have just discovered that there is, in fact, a public transit equivalent of the pesky parking ticket. It's when you (feeling smugly forethoughtful) add $20 to the $6 left on your BART ticket, & then promptly lose it. !!$&*#@!

Now the good news: the neurologist informed me, after a series of unpleasant shocks on various parts of my arm & hand, that I have no nerve damage. All nerves fine! She says I have "complex regional pain syndrome", which, if you google it, turns out to have unknown causes & unknown treatment (& also some very scary extreme examples). Fortunately, in this case, for once, the doctor is more helpful than a google search & has instructed me to gradually start using my thumb normally again. She illustrated this prescription with a sort of dramatic demonstration of how strong my thumb actually is when I take several deep relaxing breaths before trying to use it. Trippy! Hey, I have a thumb again (sometimes)! I've been playing (cautiously) with my new toy. It's very proud of its ability to cut easy things with scissors, help with some zippers, pitch in with the eating, &c. So if you hear me exhaling loudly, it's because I'm trying to get my thumb muscles to work right.

Yes. I am still here. Well, actually, I went away & came back. Barcelona!!! What an amazing city, bursting with jaw-dropping architectural wonders, swoon-inducing food (existing side-by-side, I mean actually on the same menu, with dull mayonnaisey or brown-sauce stuff), truly enviable public transit, awesome Roman relics, friendly people, & way too much dogshit. How can people live like that? My neck was a little freaked out, what with my looking constantly up (to admire the sights) & then back down again (to avoid the shit), repeat several times a minute, for hours at a time. I guess all that sitting around in restaurants helped. Lobster & sea urchin stew. Extra-thick, yummygooey pear tatin unlike any I'd ever had. Pile of fried sardines that made me feel like a cat. Screamingly good soup with trumpets of death, aka black chanterelles. Drinkable olive oil. Marrons glaces, candied fruit, endless permutations of goat & sheep cheeses, chocolate, good wine for cheap. Then giving the thighs a good workout getting to & from our 6th-floor walkup apt.

But the burning question: DID THE THUMB LIKE IT?

Yes! It did! The thumb feels quite a bit better. Still nowhere near normal, but a glimmer of light appears, way off there at the end of the tunnel. About fucking time. I'm sick to death of this trudging along in the pitch dark. The challenge: not to tear off at top speed hoopin & hollerin toward that speck of light, thus risking injury, setback, waking up the bats (or giants), you know what I'm talking about. Oh, impatience! I must take a deep breath & continue to proceed with caution, lest I trip & fall on my face again. Pray for me.

The thumb & I are going on vacation. Hopefully this change of scenery will be so beneficial that the thumb will not mind the sudden absence of accupuncture & other expensive professional attention. Is it possible for a thumb to get spoiled? Will Princess Thumb throw tantrums after a couple days abroad? We shall see. Full report when we get back just in time for Unthanksgiving, or Thankstaking, or whatever subversive name you wanna use. Tofurkey Day?

I just heard about this book, Richard Loranger's Poems for Teeth, which is exactly what it sounds like: a book-length series of poems all about teeth. This sort of obsessiveness has great appeal for me. (I can hear y'all saying, No kidding, really??) I want to read this book. I'll be happy if it's even half as good as this other book-length poetic obsession I chanced upon in the Anderson Center library when I was there a couple years ago: Blind Huber by Nick Flynn, inspired by the life & work of a pioneering 18th-century beekeeper.

In theory, I s'pose I could have spent this year writing a book of poems about hands. Instead I have just learned how to say "I have an injured thumb" in Spanish. Tengo un pulgar herido. How's that for ambition?

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Heaven:




I don't think about my thumb at all while I'm eating this stuff.

Accupuncture is also good, but I think a lot about my thumb while that's happening.

I'm not sure what that proves exactly.

Truly you have not lived until you've witnessed David Rawlings, backed by Gillian Welch, covering Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". Audience reaction: stunned silence followed by campy arm-waving & laughter, then total mayhem & screaming as the wonderful madness of it all irrevocably reorganized the molecules of everyone present. Dang!

Runner-up for Cover of the Day: the Knitters' frenzied psychobilly "Born To Be Wild".

That last post was not exactly blogalicious. To make it up to you, here is a super-easy fig thing, so easy it's almost not even a recipe:

Halve your figs from top to bottom. In a cast iron pan, heat up a good big bloop of olive oil, a smaller blop of good organic salted butter, & a few drops of balsamic vinegar. Then sear your figs face down (meaning the sliced side down) until they start to caramelize a bit & get nice & hot all the way through. Take em out & put them face up on a plate. Crown each half with a morsel of strong-flavored goat cheese. A cheese with a little bit of funk to it. We used buche: edibly toughened rind, gooey inside the rind, crumbly & milder in the center. I wouldn't use the cream-cheese-type goat cheeses because I think they don't have quite enough flavor to balance the sweetness of the figs, but you could try it, maybe with the addition of some rosemary or the like.

Anyway, there is a popover option which transforms this dish into a whole brunch. You can make popovers (we used Mollie Katzen's recipe) & then while eating them, put a cheesy fig half inside each bite of popover. Obviously put the popovers in the oven well before doing the figs, so the timing works out. Yummm!

Eating is much better around here now that Donna's show is up. Can I just say, she kicked ass with this installation. I'm so proud of her! Go see it, you won't be sorry.

Alas, since I last blogged, Katrina turned out to be way, way worse than she first appeared, but by now you knew that already. Among millions of possible Katrina items to comment upon I choose this: if you plug in "refugee" & a recent date in an ADS-L archive search you'll get some interesting discussion. Also here.

As usual I can see both sides of the debate. Folks don't want to be lumped in with some other group they really don't identify with. On the other hand, I can't help but smell some American arrogance in here... it's the same irony I have noticed in the course of doing the Chinese Restaurant Project. (Hey, wow, you mean this might actually be on topic?! Hang onto yer hats, blog readers!) We (some people of color) get so preoccupied with defending our American-ness, i.e. "we belong here too" or "we deserve these rights too" that we seem to forget to question why it's so dang desirable to be an American. What about the other questions like: Isn't it embarrassing (& getting more so all the time) to be an American? Don't non-Americans also deserve respect, rights, resources, &c? What's so special about being recognized as an American? Of course I'm asking these questions in terms of conceptual identity, not in the context of, for example, the real daily crap that undocumented immigrants have to deal with.

I mean, part of my motivation in doing this project has been to demonstrate how we (Chinese Americans) have been here all along & are an integral part of American food culture, & dammit, why don't we get some credit for that? But really, does it matter on that pride/identity level what so-called "real Americans" (i.e. dumb white people who elected Bush) think of us & our restaurants? Why should we care?

Just wondering. Sorry if I'm rambling. I'm a little rusty at this blogging thing. Anyway, here's my suggestion for what to call people instead of refugees or evacuees or IDPs or hurricane survivors: Katrina Americans (smirk).

If you've read this far, reward yourself. I did today & it's almost enough to make me forget about my poor sufferin' hand.