Feasting Friday- Love American Style

Chickens, I’m in love. Again.


My faithful readers know that last Fall the Universe, whom I had asked most specifically to step up the pace on sending me a sweetie, obliged in the best possible way with the miraculous appearance of my Charming Suitor. A girl is never too old or jaded to be swept off her feet, and as I have mentioned now and again, I am floating these days in something of a lovebliss cloud. (Hopefully I am not overly sappy about it, I never wanted to be one of those girls who finds The One and spends all her time waxing poetical about snuggling and bringing up rainbows for no apparent reason…a girl still needs to get her snark on.)

However, this morning, totally unexpectedly, I fell in love all over again. And my Charming Suitor will have to forgive me.

Today I’m gonna talk about a hand mixer.

And don’t go all red in the face, I’m not working blue…that’s no euphemism. I mean an actual hand mixer.

Look at it.

Sigh.

Isn’t it dreamy?

This, my Chickens, is my new love, all shiny and sparkly. The Cuisinart 9 speed hand mixer with three types of attachments and a handy snap-on storage case. Boo-yah! Be still my beating heart.

When I was in college I invested a whopping $16 in a Sunbeam six speed hand mixer. When I got married back in the Stone Age, the Wasband and I registered for a Cuisinart hand mixer, but no one bought it. And since the old Sunbeam, somewhat spattered with the kind of stuff that never really comes off, still worked, so we didn’t replace it. And as a single girl on a tight budget, in all these years, I couldn’t justify replacing an appliance that still worked.

(I could justify the acquisition of NEW appliances like an ice cream maker and a cotton candy machine, but not replacing perfectly adequate old ones…I’m complex.)

As you know, often companies send me products to try out in hopes I will write about them here. And I am all for that, since I love to bring you info about cool stuff, and sadly do not have the financial wherewithal to just go around purchasing things willy nilly. They don’t pay me, just send me review items, some of which I have to send back and some of which I get to keep. And sometimes they give me stuff to giveaway to you, which we love! (And I can guarantee you that for every product I have received for free and raved about here, there is at least one I got and tested and am not recommending to you because it was not up to my standards.)

This is a long way of saying that when the people over at Cuisinart thought I might like to try out their snazzy hand mixer and popped one in the mail to me, I was over the moon delighted to receive it, and am now all doe-eyed and sparkly. (and the trusty Sunbeam is being donated to another household as we speak!)

I’ve actually been a pretty loyal paying Cusinart customer over the years. I have both their Mini-Prep chopper, (which I got in college and still works perfectly some 20 years later), and a commercial quality 14 c food processor with all the bells and whistles, which is the workhorse of my kitchen, especially at holiday time. A couple years back I got a gift certificate to a local kitchen store for my birthday and indulged in their ice cream maker, which is about the easiest thing I ever used, dangerously so! (My new favorite recipe of this summer is a sweet corn sorbet.) So when the hand mixer arrived, I didn’t think for a moment that it would be anything less than great.

I did not anticipate dreamy.

Like, Nathan Fillion carrying a French Silk Pie dreamy. 

thanks recipeshapsody.com

Like, George Clooney feeding you spaghetti Carbonara in bed in Italy dreamy.

thanks bbcgoodfood.com

Like Jennifer Aniston wanting to option your book and star in the movie and maybe become one of your besties dreamy.

Like finding your own Charming Suitor dreamy.

Sorry, I digress.  Let us get back to this miracle of modern technology....

First off, it has three kinds of attachments…the standard mixers, a whisk, and dough hooks! I had never seen a hand mixer with this option, and I’m not much of a bread baker, but I can tell you that CS is very excited about whipping up his famous yeast rolls with it. All of the attachments, plus a handy little spatula, fit in a plastic container which snaps onto the bottom of the mixer for easy storage and excellent portability. It has nine speeds, the lowest of which is barely gently mixing, and the highest of which seems to be enough to power a small helicopter.

This morning, prepping for my appearance next Tuesday on the WGN Noon news (set your DVRs!) I needed to whip up a batch of my healthier chocolate chip cookies. So I pulled out the new mixer, and went to work.

Oh.

Oh my.

It went through butter I wasn’t quite patient enough to let soften completely like, well, butter! Still almost slightly frozen in the middle, and yet, in just a few seconds, light and fluffy and creamed with the sugar. The egg blended in the amount of time it took to turn it on and off again. The extra slow start speed meant that when I added the flour, it did not shower me with a poof, dusting me and the whole kitchen, but lovingly folded the dry ingredients in with nary an explosion. This is a dough that gets a little thick, especially after you add the oats, but the mixer blended with ease. Barely broke a sweat. And neither did I.

It’s a good thing they don’t expect me to send it back, because this baby isn’t leaving my side. I’m already dreaming up more excuses to use it…there will be new recipes coming your way soon!

So, if it is time to replace an old mixer, or to give a gift to your favorite cook, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Buy one now.

Just be careful. You’re likely to fall in love.

Don’t forget there is still time to enter to win lunch with me and Jen Lancaster in your hometown, you have through 11:59pm on Monday! Click here for deets.

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend. And here is that cookie recipe…an almost guiltless pleasure!  I'll be back on Tuesday to announce the winner of the Stennifer Lunchtastic Tour contest...

Healthier Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 c whole wheat flour
1 c all purpose flour
2 t baking powder
½ t salt
¼ t nutmeg
¼ t cinnamon
½ c butter, softened
¾ c organic brown sugar
1 egg
¼ c skim milk
5 oz. dark chocolate chips or bittersweet chocolate chips
½ c rolled oats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl mix dry ingredients with a whisk to combine. In a mixing bowl cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and milk and combine well. Mix in dry ingredients. Add chocolate chips and oats. Drop rounded teaspoons on greased cookie sheets, and press down lightly. Bake for 12-14 minutes until browned around the edges. Cool on a rack.

Yours in Good Taste,
The Polymath

Madness

Dear Costume Designers for Mad Men-

First off, let me congratulate you on being a part of one of the best shows ever produced for television. Well written, thoughtfully acted, beautifully shot…really a triumph.

And in general, please know that I love the look of your work. Betty Draper’s cool icy beauty in those amazing ensembles where the dress has a matching coat of the same fabric, Grace Kelly couldn’t be more stunning.

Don Draper and Roger Sterling, either of whom would look fantastic in a burlap sack, those slick tailored suits with the trench coats and de rigueur fedoras, every woman I know wants to be the meat in that sandwich, if you’ll pardon the expression.

From Peggy’s prim and buttoned down working girl duds to Campbell’s slightly slick suits that underscore his general oiliness, you really have a total success on your hands.

Or at least you did.

The runaway standout of this hit is the character of Joan, played to purring seductive perfection by Christina Hendricks. Her personal code of honor which includes such delicious dichotomies as playing mama lioness protecting the execs fragile egos and professional foibles, while simultaneously sleeping with her married boss…pure melodramatical yumminess. Her stoic acceptance of rape at the hands of her fiancée, truly a brave bit of acting. She is complex and interesting and terrifically fun to watch.

And let’s be honest, how refreshing to see a woman on television who is built like a woman, and not a twelve year old boy! You have celebrated Joan’s curves, accentuating her amazing hourglass figure, letting her be the sexiest woman on the show, and giving those of us who are not, have never been, and never will be a size two a little frisson of confidence in our own curvaceousness.

I loved her as a bad-ass rebel courtesan in Joss Whedon’s short-lived and much beloved Firefly (mmmmm Firefly. Nathan Fillion. Sorry. Lost the plot for a moment.) and was really excited to find her in a strong supporting role on Mad Men.

So please understand that when I write you this letter it is simply to ask, in all genuine curiosity, and from a place of love…

What the f*** were you smoking when you did the costumes for this week’s episode!?!?

Christina seems to have put on a couple of pounds, which she can pull off like nobody’s business, and not being privy to her personal life nor much up on my Hollywood gossip, it is certainly possible that she might be preggers, but I’m not on baby bump watch.

I am however concerned that the outfits you put her in this week could not have been less flattering to some of her, um, currently slightly more abundant assets.

The shiny green blouse with the bow at the neck? Might be totally period appropriate, and is certainly in her wheelhouse color-wise. But good lord, what sort of underpinnings did you put that girl in? She looked like she was smuggling a pair of watermelons in her bra! I mean, I know she’s gifted in that area, but she looked like she should be hanging off the prow of a ship!

I know that some of the fault lies with the director’s choice of camera angles, having the poor girl filmed straight on from the side as she bent over was fair to neither her nor you. Nor to those of us watching, since who can follow the action when you are worried that fair red-headed Joan is going to faceplant in the middle of Sterling Cooper’s Madison Avenue offices due to the weight of her ponderous Kelly-green-silk-clad bosom?

I thought you might have saved the day with the blue suit in her second scene, from the back, it fit her like a glove. But then she turned around and from the front it fit her like, well, like she had borrowed Nell Carter’s boobs and tried to smuggle them into the office in a teal wool carpetbag tied around her neck with yet another blouse bow.

My sister and I had to rewind every scene she was in at least twice, because the ridiculousness of her in those unflattering get-ups made us laugh so hard we were crying and making dolphin noises, missing some of the cutting wit of the dialogue.

I assume if she is knocked up in real life that it will be written into the script sooner rather than later. But if she just had a few extra cheeseburgers between seasons (and god bless her if she did, you go girl!) for the love of god, get her in a drape-y cowlneck or give her some subtle ruching around the middle, and give her some balance.

And if you want to tell the director to have her cheat out a little bit so that he doesn’t film her in total profile, that wouldn’t hurt either.

I’m not saying, I’m just saying…

Your fan,
Stacey

Holy Phone Book, Batman!

Mea Culpa, chickens, I know I’ve been absent since the big contest reveal, and I do apologize most sincerely. Between some serious jet lag from the glorious France romp, getting back and immediately running to NY to kick some serious cocktail tuchus, immediately followed by a business trip and then the holiday weekend, I’ve just been the teensiest bit overwhelmed.

But I did want to share this delightful little piece of Americana I uncovered during my recent travels.

To fully appreciate this story, you must first go back to the mid-1970s when your young Polymath was just a precocious thing, when math homework was the scariest thing you could imagine, and kids all over the country were in charge of physically changing the television channels since there was no “clicker”. It was a bucolic time of enormous wing collars, orange and brown plaid bellbottoms (seriously mom?), and Sunday nights belonged to the Wonderful World of Disney and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. The Wizard of Oz was on once a year, and time stopped for its showing.

It was something of an odd time for after school television, what with all the Brady’s and Partridge’s endlessly going through puberty, and Tom and Jerry’s dysfunctional relationship playing out, but the one show that really stood out among the rest for me was the reruns of the 1960s series Batman. Unabashedly campy, clearly filmed to be watched stoned, and subversively sexy, it was one of my most favorite hours of television. Not that I didn’t love me some Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, but when it came to crimefighting and mystery solving, Batman was my guy. Blue tights, that pointy mask with the painted on sardonic eyebrows, plus the fact that as badass as he was in the cape, he was equally urbane and gentlemanly in the endless tuxedos that Bruce Wayne needed to don for all his charitable works.

My first major crush, pre-dating both Shawn Cassidy in his tight white jeans and Donny Osmond in his purple socks, was Adam West, the perfect Gemini boy for a Gemini Polymath, half millionaire Cary Grant type, and half secret identity superhero.

Meow indeed, Catwoman.

This infatuation led to my poor mother having to not only take me to the Chicago Auto Show to see the REAL BATMOBILE, but also having to wait in line with me for what felt like eleventy million hours (and was probably 40 minutes) to have my picture taken with Adam West in full Batman regalia. Of course it was just a Polaroid, and if memory serves I was so overwhelmed that I burst into tears, probably because I had assumed that Adam might offer to at least take a girl on a RIDE in that shiny black car after she had schlepped all over the McCormick place to find him and then waited in that interminable line…I’m not saying, I’m just saying. (Mom, you are totally forgiven for the orange and brown plaid bellbottoms, FYI. Not so much for the denim Arco jumpsuits, however…)

I of course did not understand at the time how truly awful it must have been for poor Adam, who had to sit for hours in that ridiculous get-up in a huge convention hall, where half the audience was made up of serious gear head guys mumbling homophobic jokes under their breath at him, and the rest of the audience was comprised of odd fans and quivery little girls who burst into tears when he smiled and said hi. On behalf of all of us, Adam, I am sorry and you were a real trouper.

Flash forward thirty-some years, and I am on a business trip to Sun Valley, Idaho, which is where Adam West currently resides.

And while I understand that he is very happily married, and old enough to be a grandfatherly sort of figure, and my current crush on Nathan Fillion leaves little room to be pining for Adam West, I do still have a soft spot for the caped crusader…which could lead a girl alone in a hotel room to look in the phone book.

You can only imagine my delight when I discovered the following:

KAPOW!

SPLAT!!

SHAZAM!!!

ZOWIE!!!!

And yes, I did defile the phone book in my hotel room, and no, I’m not sorry.

He’s still suave as hell.