Okay. You know what? This avian flu pandemic shit is freakin me out.
Is it not bad enough that we have wars, terrorists, police officers, car accidents, plane crashes, serial killers, cancer, earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes to worry about, but we must also worry about a goddamn plague-like bird flu!?!? Fuck.
I am sick of being scared. I wish I could be a big girl and say that I'm not scared, but something about the combination of the shitty weather we've been having and the loud chatter about pandemics makes me feel that bleak times are ahead.
On another note, I am less worried about bird flus than I am about my big brother who is going through another tough time with his health and it's just tearing me up inside. Today is as good a day as any to be sad and worried about mortality and to pray to a god that I don't believe in simply because I don't know what else to do.
I made it up out of the blue and it's freakin delicious. I don't have an exact recipe, because it's not an exact science. It's my own special wonton. I've always been a fan of the wonton. Not the kind you get in Chinese restaurants where they're twisted into difficult shapes and fried with the most nonexistent little morsel of meat in the middle, but the kind that you would get at Geppetto's in Ashland, Oregon, full of cream cheese and spinach and perfectly golden crispy. I always have to have those when I go there. I mix up the spicy mustard with some honey and dip the wontons in that. It is, quite simply, the bomb.
Of course, I can only have them when I go to Geppetto's, and most of the time, that's 3,000 miles away. So I went on the hunt for wonton skins, which was more difficult in New York than one would think. I finally found them in an awesome little Indian store on Lexington called Kaluyastan's that has every amazing thing you could never find anywhere else. I experimented a couple of times with the wontons. I tried to make the spinach ones, but there was too much oil content. They came out like completely deflated, greasy little triangles. They would have tasted good...if not for the total lack of light, flakey crunch and the fact that they were ugly, flat and glistening.
Darcie made wontons once when I was visiting and I remember them being awesome, so I asked her what she did. She told me she used mostly cream cheese and a little bit of mozerella, but not much. That's when it hit me. The fuckin oil in the monterey jack was ruining the wonton. I'm a real Einstein.
So recently I decided to try again, and to shake it up a bit. Or as Emeril Legasse says, "kick it up a notch."
For a little more than a dozen of Maria's extra special wontons:
About 4 oz. philly cream cheese
About 2 oz. goat cheese
A small pile of part skim Mozzerella (just a few ounces, but I don't remember exactly how much I used)
Thawed wonton skins
a small dish of olive oil or melted butter
Thinly sliced prosciutto (Less than a quarter pound is all you need!)
Mix together softened cream cheese and goat cheese until fluffy. Set aside mozerella. Assemble the wontons by laying down a wonton skin on the cutting board and - imagining that you are going to fold it crosswise into a triangle - place a dollop of the cream and goat cheese mixture on the skin and then top it with a pinch of mozzerella. Take a small piece of prosciutto and lay it like a cap over the little mound of cheese the same way you would see sushi on top of rice. Brush the edges of the wonton skin with a tiny bit of olive oil or melted butter, and fold the wonton into a triangle. Use a fork to seal the edges on both sides. Once you've made a batch of these, heat your oil to frying temperature and fry them to golden brown. Lay them on a paper towel to soak up any excess grease.
They will be golden and crunchy and absolutely delicious. Even Rob likes them and he's not all that fond of goat cheese. Now that I've mastered this, I'm going to have to try the spinach ones again.
***
I've been cooking up some good stuff lately. Best of all though was the macaroni and cheese I made on me and Rob's 4th anniversary since our first date. I wanted to make him something he was going to flip for. Then one day, while watching an episode of Good Eats with Alton Brown on the Food Network, I learned how to make the best mac and cheese that I've ever personally tasted. I'm going to tell you the recipe, but there is one thing you need to do. Instead of using panko breadcrumbs like he says in this recipe, use roughly chopped garlic croutons to top this dish. They gave it the most amazing crunch and delicious garlicky kick. Robert's eyes just about rolled into the back of his head with ecstacy when he tasted this. We ate every single last bite of leftovers. One other thing, I used a macaroni type noodle called a Pipette instead of the smaller elbow macaroni. The Pipette has the capacity to hold a bit more cheese, which is a beautiful thing.
Baked Macaroni and Cheese Recipe
Alton Brown
Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
1/2 pound elbow macaroni
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon powdered mustard
3 cups milk
1/2 cup yellow onion, finely diced
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 large egg
12 ounces sharp cheddar, shredded
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Fresh black pepper
Topping:
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup panko bread crumbs (or chopped croutons!)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the pasta to al dente.
While the pasta is cooking, in a separate pot, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and mustard and keep it moving for about five minutes. Make sure it's free of lumps. Stir in the milk, onion, bay leaf, and paprika. Simmer for ten minutes and remove the bay leaf.
Temper in the egg. Stir in 3/4 of the cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Fold the macaroni into the mix and pour into a 2-quart casserole dish. Top with remaining cheese.
Melt the butter in a saute pan and toss the bread crumbs to coat. Top the macaroni with the bread crumbs. (Use the croutons! Trust me.) Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and rest for five minutes before serving.
Perhaps this STYLEscope from Life&Style has some valuable message that I could seize on for peace of mind (or just a juvenile laugh that almost makes me pee my pants):
Virgo: Uranus unleashes its unpredictable power on your home front. (Yikes! Sounds painful.) Neighbors spring a sudden surprise or shake up your schedule (no thank you!!!). Cheer yourself up by splurging on a sumptuous Chanel mulberry tint. (That's the only part that makes any damn sense to me.)
Alright. The silent retreat must come to an end. I don't know what my problem is, but it's going to stop now.
No one likes to admit when they're going through an emotionally difficult time in their life. There's always a sense of guilt in revealing these types of struggles, because there's always a million (or a hundred million) people out there who have it so much worse than my "mid-20s crisis." Crisis is such a strong word that it feels trite to use it in the context of feelings that are difficult to nail down and a nondescript sense of anxiety and fear. Does that even qualify as a crisis, when placed in perspective with the rest of the world's crises? But then, maybe the world in general is one of the greatest contributors to these feelings in me. I can't even find words to express the sadness that I feel. It's not my own life that leaves me with this feeling as much as the vast world outside, that I can't touch and can't see and can't begin to understand other than to be one more spectator to the media's coverage and interpretations of worldly events. Hurricanes, earthquakes, massacres, political injustice, human brutality. It all sits like a dark mass of discomfort that I don't know how to face or deal with.
There's also my personal life: My persistent complex of pointless worry, anxiety and fear of both failure and loss. Pointless doesn't even cover it. There is nothing on this earth that is more unproductive than fear. So why is it always there? Fear of failure to accomplish my goals. Fear of failure to make my relationship work. Fear of loss.
Fear of loss is something that I believe was seared into my soul when I witnessed my grandmother's sudden death as a four year old and was reinforced in my unsettling early 20s when many of my young friends lost their lives. The fear has gained strength as I have entered adulthood. As a teenager I was happy-go-lucky enough that I thought I was on top of the world. I didn't fear anything back then. It's true. I was free to enjoy every single thing that came my way. The joys of life weren't entangled with the fear that they were going to be torn from me or that things wouldn't necessarily work out. There was a sense of security in the belief that everything was going to turn out perfectly, since for me, in one way or another, I always seemed to have a way of landing on my feet. (I still do - I have had a sort of innate lucky streak in life) Or maybe I was always just good at viewing things positively and taking difficult situations and accepting them as learning experiences. Where has all that youthful positivity gone? Why has it been infringed upon by negativity, fear and self-sabotage? In fear, we lose joy, and by the time we learn to regain it, years of our lives can be consumed in a cloud of useless worry that obscures our ability to fully appreciate our blessings. I feel like this has already begun to happen to me and I need to find a way to put the breaks on. I need to find peace.
I remember as a teenager thinking that everyone should be smart and analytical enough to work out their own problems without drugs or therapy or anything else. I was so smug. I thought happiness was a simple choice that you made every day when the sun came up. As an adult, I fight back the forces and circumstances that make that choice difficult to make; emotional baggage that weighs down on me and makes me sad when I should be happy. And most of that is just fear and self-pity. I have an addictive personality that clings to low level mind altering substances to keep my grip on who I think I am. But it's not just about vices and addictions, it's about the structure of my self that makes me feel like those things are a crucial part of who I am and without them I would somehow be a less interesting person. (Stupid, right?)
I'm sure that reading this, it would be easy for someone to get the impression that I am hopelessly depressed. I'm not. I smile frequently. I enjoy life. I enjoy humor. I am not paralyzed by the issues I've discussed here. I get up every morning and put thought and energy into looking nice. I love spending time with my friends, I cherish my life and I love my boyfriend and my family. But fear is also a constant companion. And I'd like to tell the motherfucker (fear itself, that is) to kick rocks and leave me be. Anyway, all this has something to do with why I haven't been writing.