Girl Detective

I heard about a $25 energy audit from a friend, then read it recommended in the Star Tribune. $25 is for a standard audit, and the energy company in Minneapolis will send an auditor to your home to go through your house and evaluate your heating use and potential ways to save money. They will also tell you how efficient or not certain fixes are. For example, replacing our boiler (original to our 1917 house) would take 15 to 20 years to pay for itself, thus it’s not a priority. Yet turning down the thermostat even one degree at night is an easy way to save money. The audit takes about an hour and a half, and the auditor (an independent contractor, not a direct employee of the energy company) leaves a detailed report and a goody bag of energy saving devices such as weather strip, clear caulk, plastic window covering, foam sealant and a low-flow shower head. (The latter item is all well and good for people who have an average amount of hair. I have rather a lot when I’m not pregnant and for the next few months even more; I’d never get out of the shower if I didn’t have decent water pressure for rinsing.) There’s about an eight-week wait for an audit because it’s a good deal and there’s high demand, but if you live in the Twin Cities, I found it very worthwhile, even though it made my already lengthy to-do list has grown even longer.

You start by shopping for new appliances. You end up calling an electrician to re-wire your house.

We shopped yesterday for a new washer/dryer. Simple, right? Look at Consumer Reports, visit recommended stores, choose, buy, wait for delivery.

BUT we have a gas dryer. And a gas dryer costs $50 more than an electric one. Plus, the city of Minneapolis is very strict about who can fiddle with gas lines, so stores will deliver but not connect in the city. Instead, we’d have to pay to have the current dryer disconnected, then have the new dryer delivered and the old one taken away, then pay again for someone to come and connect the dryer to code.

What a pain, we thought. Let’s just get electric. Until we looked at our electric box and realized a few things. We are at maximum capacity, and a ridiculous number of things seems to be on one breaker. So I’ve called an electrician about getting an upgrade.

That still leaves the question of gas versus electric dryer. As the energy guy noted today during the audit of our house, it doesn’t make financial or common sense to use fossil fuel to generate electricity to run an appliance that can be run on straight fossil fuel without the conversion. So–get electric and avoid the $50 cost plus the costs of de- and re-install? Or go with the “practical” choice? Also, can we get this done by the time Drake’s little brother arrives? Stay tuned. It’s an adventure.

#59 in my movie challenge for 2005 was Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, directed by John Hughes and starring Steve Martin and John Candy. Martin is a stuck-up ad guy trying to get home for Thanksgiving, and Candy is the hapless buddy he ends up with for the journey. The movie has a good heart, but felt stale and slow over its running time. I’d heard this recommended as one of the best holiday comedies, but I was disappointed.

#104 in my book challenge for 2005 was Batman: The Long Halloween, written by Loeb and illustrated by Sale. This was Loeb and Sale’s first multi-issue collaboration, and it has much to recommend it. It is rooted in the characters from Frank Miller’s Year One, but expands on them in this noir tale of mafia and corruption in Gotham City. A killer is loose and taking out members of the Falcone family business. Batman, police commissioner Jim Gordon and DA Harvey Dent are trying to catch the killer and collect enough evidence on Falcone to put him in jail. Each member of Batman’s rogues’ gallery is introduced over the course of thirteen chapters, interpreted through Sale’s distinctive and striking artistic style. There is excellent characterization here, and great chemistry between Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, and their alter-egos Batman and Catwoman. The story falls flat at the end, though. When the killer is purportedly revealed in one of the penultimate chapters, it is satisfying and makes sense. Yet the book goes on to finger not just one but two other characters. It’s a surprise ending that was set up in advance, so I have no quibbles there. But it’s murky–it’s not clear who murdered whom, and this feels cheap after the earlier, more satisfying reveal.

#103 in my 2005 book challenge was Batman: Year One, two steps back from where I started, which was to read the Loeb/Sale collaboration Catwoman: When in Rome. The Catwoman story takes place after Batman: The Long Halloween, which in turn is rooted in some of the ancillary characters from Miller’s seminal Year One. So re-reading Year One was where I began, and was reminded of why it’s not only one of my favorite Batman stories, but one of my favorite graphic novels. It’s not really about Batman; this is Jim Gordon’s story. Both the art by David Mazuchelli and story by Miller are spare and impressionistic, yet so evocative that the book feels rich and complete. Batman is one of the most intriguing, complex superheroes because he is “merely” human. Year One shows the messy humanity of Batman, Catwoman, and the very fallible Gordon. It doesn’t involve a single supervillain, only corrupt civilians. The mood of this book was evident in last year’s successful film, Batman Begins, which many assumed, incorrectly, was adapted from Year One.

#102 in my book challenge for 2005 was Rent Girl by Michelle Tea, a recommendation on Blog of a Bookslut. It’s an autobiographical account of Tea’s time as a prostitute. Just because a book is about prostitution doesn’t make it edgy or interesting. I found it irritating. Tea became a prostitute after she found out her girlfriend was one, and because she had nothing better to do and the money was good. There are some occasional insights about the relations between clients and prostitutes, and Tea’s honesty about her feelings about the clients are sometimes impressively complicated and dark. Ultimately, though, this is the story of a foolish, immature girl surrounded by others like herself. She does not grow or change over the course of the narrative, and I found it hard to care much about her. The book was further diminished by numerous misspellings. Additionally, the illustrations by McCubbin, a darling of comic-book bad-boy Warren Ellis, were not only stiff and too photo-model based, but they often contradicted the text. I found this disconnection particularly annoying. Did McCubbin not read the text carefully? Was the text altered after the art was done? Whatever the reason, the text describes one woman wearing a floral dress, but a solid-color sheath is pictured. Another woman is written as wearing a conservative dress, but one with a thigh-high slit is pictured. Later, a guy in a polo shirt is drawn wearing a button down. This book’s sales and reviews likely benefit from its salacious subject, but I found the story and art merely adequate.

When I read about red velvet cupcakes with peppermint white chocolate frosting on the food blog Je Mange La Ville (sorry no link; the site is down), I determined to make them for Christmas. I don’t know why, but something about red velvet was compelling, even though I know it’s all food coloring.

The original recipe for cupcakes and frosting was from the cake doctor, and involved a mix for the cupcakes. I don’t do mixes. (OK, OK, I do use those Annie’s microwave mac & cheese mixes for my son Drake, and have been oddly addicted to them myself during the pregnancy, but other than that, no mixes.) The author of Je Mange pointed out a red velvet recipe at Epicurious, so I decided to check that out, search for others, and compare. What I found was that red velvet recipes weren’t all that consistent. Some called for 2 ounces of red food coloring, others for just one, some called for cake flour, others didn’t, the amount of cocoa varied widely, etc. Also, most of them said to mix the red food coloring with the cocoa to form a paste. That’s silly, I thought. Why not add the food coloring with the liquid ingredients and the cocoa with the dry? When my cupcakes came out strangely variegated, bright red with brownish streaks, I thought, OK, maybe not so silly.

This lack of consistency is why I’m such a fan of the recipes of Cook’s Illustrated, where they test the daylights out of a recipe, then come up with a master. When I cook from their recipes, I get outstanding results. Alas, they have never seen fit to do a red-velvet cake recipe, and I think I now know why.

I used the Epicurious recipe mostly, leaving out the extra water and increasing the cocoa by a tablespoon. The recipe made 23 cupcakes, and they took far longer to bake than the indicated time. What resulted were fine, but by no means outstanding, cupcakes. They were a disturbing bright red, so if I made them again I would only use 1 oz food coloring. The texture was good though the outsides were a bit tough, and they had a faint, pleasant cocoa flavor.

The frosting turned out better, but the white chocolate tasted over the top. After sampling several of them, I am convinced that a better holiday dessert would be a dark chocolate cupcake with a simpler peppermint frosting, either cream cheese or buttercream. Additionally, baking 2 dozen cupcakes at once didn’t work. While I’m all for more cupcakes, I think it would be better to use a smaller recipe that yielded just a dozen cupcakes, or bake a larger batch one dozen at a time.

Top Ten Books 1 and 2 were #s 98 and 99 on my book challenge for the year, the graphic novel collections by Alan Moore, illustrated by Gene Ha with layouts by Zander Cannon. I re-read this series before reading the new Top Ten graphic novel, The Forty-Niners, by Moore and Ha, which was #100. Then I enjoyed all of them so much that I pulled out the Smax mini-series by Moore and Cannon and re-read that to get to #101. These are some fine graphic novels.

First, about the original Top Ten series. This is a police/mystery procedural, set in Neopolis, a city where everyone has super powers. Top Ten are the police force who try, and mostly succeed, in maintaining order. Moore’s story is marvelous. The multiple plots threads are complex and intriguing. The characters are many and yet still fleshed out. Ha’s scratchy, detailed art perfectly conveys the chaotic nature of the story, while Cannon’s behind-the-scenes layout makes the complex story flow clearly. Top Ten begins with Robyn Slinger’s first day on the job. Partnered with a big, surly blue guy named Smax, Robyn is immediately part of the multiple cases the force is handling. The twelve-issue series had multiple arcs, and maintained them all throughout as Robyn and her fellow police officers figure things out.

Top Ten: The Forty-Niners is a graphic novel original that tells the story of the early days of Neopolis, and centers on of one of the characters from the earlier series, Steve Traynor, aka Jetlad. It’s set in a mythical post-WWII time. Ha’s art is different–softer, with more pastel to reflect the nostalgia and the promise of the new era. While it can’t compete with the complexity of the longer series, this is still an outstanding story with lovely art and great characterization.

Smax has an entirely different tone. It is set in the immediate aftermath of the original series, and follows Robyn as she accompanies her work partner Jeff Smax to his homeworld to attend the funeral of the “uncle” who raised him. Smax comes from a pre-industrial world where magic still figures prominently, with fairies, elves and more. Cannon’s whimsical art style is suited both to the magical milieu of the story as well as its humorous tone. While there are dark parts to the story, the ending, as is true of the Forty-Niners, is not for the conservative. Smax is a fun, funny romp of a story, filled with visual in-jokes.

Both Smax and The Forty-Niners are good companions to the original Top Ten, fleshing out some of the background. After having read all four, though, I am reminded that the original series is probably one of my favorite comic series. Ever. It was certainly my favorite book from Moore’s line of America’s Best Comics. (Yes, I did like it even more than League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The storylines were more complex, the characters more engaging, and the endings more satisfying.)

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing more than once and expecting different results, than I’m not sure why my husband G. Grod and I keep taking our son Drake out to restaurants. Amnesia? Hope? Insanity? The Convention Grill is one of the most kid-friendly restaurants on earth both in menu and atmosphere. It is an old-style grill that primarily serves burgers, fries, shakes/malts, and sundaes. Prices are reasonable, service is matter of fact, and quality is good. Yet even in such a place, our two-year-old Drake will not eat, will not sit still, and does not have the patience to last a few minutes, much less the time it takes for a meal to be ordered and consumed. Other parents assure me that this is normal and will pass, but it saddens me that Drake is so immune to the charms of eating out. I, however, am such a sucker that the temptation of a cheeseburger (american cheese, pickles, lettuce, mayo, mustard and ketchup), those fries (as long as they’re not underdone; I loathe a soggy fry), and a hot fudge sundae with bananas and whipped cream will every time cloud my judgment and make me believe that maybe, just maybe, this time Drake will be OK. He refused his burger and fries, though he mysteriously was able to hang out long enough to partake of the sundae.

#97 in my book challenge for the year was Mr. Was by Pete Hautman. This was an involved and involving mystery, family history, and time-travel saga. Time travel tales are hard to pull off, but Hautman weaves his story in and out of time skillfully. There are interesting, complex characters who come in and out of the interesting and complex plot. I had a few questions about names, two that were remarkably similar, and one that someone should have recognized, but these were minor plot issues in an otherwise impressive, economically told tale.

#96 in my book challenge for the year was No Limit by Pete Hautman, a young-adult novel. It was previously published and out of print under the title “Stone Cold”. It was retitled because most teens assumed that the book had to do with the wrestler with the same nickname, Steve Austin. It was republished because of the recent increase in poker popularity and awareness, particularly for no-limit Texas Hold-em. It was a quick, entertaining read about a sixteen year old boy who gets hooked quickly into poker. As he learns and wins, it’s easy to see why he continues to gamble. He is able to succeed mainly by learning to read other players’ “tells,” or their mannerisms at the poker table. While this is interesting, it is likely to be dated now that poker has gained a wider awareness. He has a goofy, hapless friend who does less well. The ending is a surprise, but is not unearned, and perhaps the best part of the book. Hautman neatly avoided both easy moralizing and the obvious ending. The dynamic of the main character and his friend, though, is nearly identical to that in Godless, one of Hautman’s more recent, and I think better, novels.

#95 in my book challenge for the year was Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. After I read and enjoyed Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club last year, I resolved to read all six of Austen’s novels; I’m halfway there. Northanger Abbey tells the story of an average girl, Catherine Morland, and how she becomes involved in Bath society and her entanglement with two families, the Thorpes and the Tilneys. Catherine is an often painfully naive main character, and the book frequently read to me like a middle-grade novel with its simplistic, passionless encounters between the sexes. What was more intriguing was Austen’s defense of the novel as an art form, as well as her critique of those who take escapist reading more seriously than it deserves. The hero of the book, Henry Tilney, was not a favorite of mine. I found him something of an ass, condescending to women, thinly characterized, and not that interesting. This was a short, easy read, worthwhile in some aspects, but without the stronger authorial control of the two, later-written Austen novels I’ve read, Pride and Prejudice and Emma.

In my continued attempt to dine out in these last few weeks before our second child arrives, I made plans with my friend Queenie at Bakery on Grand. Queenie likes duck, and Bakery on Grand was purported to do it well, so off we went.

We started with the pate appetizer. While very good, I might have preferred a warm appetizer on the cold, snowy night. She and I then split two duck entrees. The roast duck was savory in a pan sauce with asparagus and mashed potatoes. The crisped leg was rich and served over a confit and garnished with sausage. Uncharacteristically, I was going to pass on dessert, but Queenie ordered a poached pear in pastry with caramel sauce and warm cream, which I ate most of. It was just too good to abandon. And the duck leftovers made an outstanding lunch the next day.

My family was in town last week, and when I’m on my game as a hostess (which is not always the case during this rather challenging second pregnancy) one of my goals is to make sure my guests eat well of their favorite foods. With my sister, we went out for sushi to Origami. On a weeknight the restaurant wasn’t crowded. Service was attentive and thoughtful. In spite of varied advice on the safety of sushi during pregnancy, I wasn’t feeling brave enough to risk raw fish, so I ordered miso soup, the Encounter (a roll of cooked salmon, scallops, and veggies that is then tempura dipped; yum), a salmon skin roll and futo maki. Never let it be said that pregnant women can’t eat well at a sushi restaurant. My sister had three kinds of tuna, all of which were excellent, a Hawaiian fish special and the sockeye salmon nigiri. My husband had the Hide roll, tuna, yellowtail, and sockeye salmon nigiri. The food was delivered in a timely but not rushed manner, the presentation was beautiful, the amount of wasabi on the nigiri was just right, and the quality of the food and the fish was excellent. My husband and I used to live within walking distance of Origami. While it’s good for us to be farther away on our one-income, soon-to-be-two-kid family budget, I do miss it a lot, and this visit was a reminder of how lovely a restaurant it is.

My father likes to eat frog legs, so when he visited last week, I made plans for Cave Vin, at 55th and Xerxes in South Minneapolis. The restaurant wasn’t full, but a table of ten’s orders slowed the kitchen down quite a lot. Following the advice from this review, we focused on appetizers rather than entrees, and among my dad, my husband and I we tried the mussels, frogs’ legs, steak tartare, calamari, frites, the lamb entree, the beet salad and the spring greens salad. All appetizers were excellent. My dad was well pleased with the battered and sauteed frog legs, the bread and the frites were excellent, and there was plenty of good stuff to dip them in–the aioli from the frites, and the garlic butter with either the mussels or the frog legs. Dad and husband split a very nice, reasonably priced bottle of wine, and we were so full (and dinner took so long) that we skipped dessert. Our server was friendly and helpful, the lighting was low and the noise wasn’t high. Aside from the slow delivery of food, it was a very good experience.

On our way to see a movie last Saturday, my husband G. Grod and I were behind the last car to get into the parking garage. We stared in disbelief at the sign that now read “Full.” Our original plans were to see a twilight matinee, have dinner at an inexpensive restaurant, and be home early to relieve the babysitter. New plans involved a different parking lot (old reliable: the little lot between Hell’s Kitchen and the old location of Big Brain Comics on S. 10th Street–$5 at night and on weekends), eating at the bar in a more expensive restaurant, and a full-price movie at The Heights theater, which features live organ music prior to movie showings on Friday and Saturday evenings.

We got seats at the bar at Vincent as soon as it opened at 5:30 p.m. The tables in the bar area were all reserved, unsurprising on a Saturday in the holiday shopping season. G. Grod and I shared the appetizer of pan-seared scallops over braised leeks in orange sauce, the Vincent burger, which I’ve praised before, has been most eloquently described by award-winning local food critic Dara Moskowitz:

This burger–and at $11.75 I know you’re already skeptical, but trust me, it’s worth it–this burger is a miracle.

To make it, the chefs at Vincent first braise short ribs overnight in a complicated stew of tomatoes, tamarind, Worcestershire sauce, and lots more. (This is a recipe chef Vincent Francoual picked up when he cooked at former New York City super-important restaurant Lespinasse.) The chefs then pull these short ribs off the bone, make a little patty of that short rib meat, add some smoked gouda to that, build a sirloin burger around it, and then just grill the heck out of it till it tastes like it’s been outside on a fire, when it hasn’t.

This miracle burger then gets tucked into a light, eggy bun that is best described as some meeting point between brioche and a Kaiser roll, a roll further dressed with a thing the restaurant modestly calls French cocktail sauce–a mayonnaise gussied up with more kinds of secret ingredients, including sherry vinegar and minced cornichons. The Vincent burger comes with all the fancy-restaurant accompaniments you hope for: sliced tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, leaf lettuce, wisps of onion.

Every bite of this burger is rich, profoundly meaty, as full of flavor as a symphony is full of sound. Like any great dish, it conquers several dimensions: In terms of flavor, the roasty qualities of beef are accented by the sweetness of the bun and the cocktail sauce, while the salt and smoke of the cheese give meaning to the fresh and light of the toppings. In terms of texture, though, the burger is exceptionally accomplished: The soft and stringy texture of the short ribs plays off the melting texture of the cheese, which teases out the more muscular texture of the burger. You know, it’s not easy for a burger to remain fascinating through every bite, but this one is.

We finished with the chocolate-caramel tart, which was garnished with Earl Grey chocolate sauce, and accompanied by a coffee sabayon, an ethereal foam encased in a chocolate wafer cylinder. The server and we agreed that the sabayon was the best part, and worth saving for last.

Even though we split an appetizer, entree, and dessert, the check, along with parking, a full-price movie, and the babysitter, totalled more than we would have liked. Since our original plans were thwarted, though, I thought we did pretty well.

#94 in my book challenge for the year was Revision by David Michael Kaplan, recommended in a workshop I took with writer Faith Sullivan at the Loft Literary Center earlier this year. This is an enormously helpful book that elucidates one of the toughest aspects of writing. His general advice is to get a first draft of a story down however you can, then spend lots of time and effort polishing it. Interestingly, this advice is antithetical to the medium in which I’m discussing it, a weblog. In general, I doubt there’s a lot of time-consuming polishing going on in the blogosphere. Kaplan’s book is simple, practical, and useful. It provides impetus and inspiration for launching into the next round of revisions on a work.

#58 in my movie challenge for the year, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, or Harry Potter 4, was directed by Mike Newell, whose best known film is probably the decade-old Four Weddings and a Funeral. This Harry Potter movie, like the books, is fun while it lasts, but doesn’t leave much impression beyond that. The special effects are first rate, and well suited to the dragons in particular. It’s enjoyable to see the teenage actors acting like teenagers. Their characters are much more foregrounded than in previous movies and the novels, while the adult teachers mostly inhabit the background. An interesting difference from the book is that the villain is foreshadowed better and earlier. Also valuable is the absence of some of the more trying subplots of the books, such as Hermione’s championing of house elves. Dobby, thankfully, does not appear at all. For anyone who, like me, found themselves itching to take an editor’s pen to Rowling’s overlong novel, this movie does an admirable job of cutting the crap. Unfortunately, what is left is merely a pretty piece of entertainment. For all its aspirations of depth and scariness, it falls strangely flat. I preferred the more palpable complexity of the previous movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

#93 in my book challenge for the year, In a Lonely Place was a recommendation from my husband G. Grod, who read a recommendation of it by Frank Miller, the comic book creator of Sin City. Miller embraces a lot of the conventions of 40’s pulp noir. Hughes, however, did not. In a Lonely Place is narrated exclusively by the bad guy, Dix Steele, and Hughes carefully ensures that the reader is engaged by the story but does not identify with him. Dix’s misogyny is never in question, but the violence is always implied. The book is part of a series of women writing noir, and has an excellent afterward that contextualizes the work and allows the reader to reconsider details of the novel within a feminist framework. I was glad for the thought-provoking afterward, as it encouraged me to keep thinking about things I rushed through reading because the story was so compellingly told.

#92 in my book challenge for the year, Sexy by Joyce Carol Oates was much darker than the young adult novel by Oates I’d read previously, Big Mouth and Ugly Girl. While it has similar themes of persecution and rumor, it is told entirely from the point of view of its main character, Darren Flynn. He is good looking and an athlete, but uncomfortable both about the attention his looks attract as well as his working-class family. Darren is a complex, interesting character, and at the end of the book Oates does not offer up easy answers for the many difficult questions she’s raised.