Making Madeleines

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 12-20 minutes

Madeleine Recipe For Four Molds

Sugar – 1.333 cup
Orange extract - 2tsp
Eggs - 6

Melted Butter - 2.5 sticks

Flour - 2 cups

Preheat oven to 400F

Throw the sugar, orange extract, and eggs into a bowl and beat them. A Kitchenaid or other stand mixer with a whisk or beater attachment is a 1:72 scale version of god when it comes to this recipe. With the beating started, melt the butter, probably in the microwave.

By the time the butter is melted, the egg mix should look like this:


And the butter should look like this:


Chunks in the butter are okay, but they shouldn’t be too big. In this case, another ten seconds in the microwave should fix it.

Pour the butter slowly into the eggs and sugar, whisking the whole time. Once the butter is mixed, slowly add the flour. If you’re whisking by hand, this is where your daily weight training happens. With the flour all added in, the batter should look creamy, with little peaks. Kind of like this:


Now you get your Madeleine molds out. No molds? No problem. Pretty much any mold will work, including muffin (or mini muffin) pans. If you want the actual seashell molds, you can find them online or at cooking stores fairly easily. Nonstick is nice, but not necessary, because you’re going to butter the shit out of the pan before dumping the batter in.

As for the seashell shape, I have no idea. Maybe they were originally baked in seashells? Honestly, to me, the strakes on the bottom of the finished Madeleine look like the bottom of a jetski. Seriously, go find a picture. It’s eerily close.

Speaking of butter, you should now melt a little more into a small bowl. Grab a pastry or basting brush, and slather the butter into each of the molds, making sure to get some up and over the edge of each indentation. You don’t need to be careful, especially since rushing the job and laying it on thick works best. In the photo, the molds to the left are buttered, and the ones on the right are dry. Get them all!


Scoop some of the batter into the molds. It expands, so anywhere from half to two-thirds full is plenty. Yeah, like this:


They go into the oven for anywhere from 12-20 minutes, depending on the usual variables of size and pan material and actual oven temperature, so keep an eye on them. They should look like this when they come out.


Tip them out onto cooling rack and you’re done!


In case you didn’t catch the recipe, these are basically carbs and butter fat, so they’re properly appalling to the dieting types. They’re French, too, so remember to drink plenty of wine to stave off heart disease. I obviously eat these things whenever I can get my hands on them, and I’ve had no heart attacks so far. But I think that if my arteries ever unionize I might be in trouble.

Tinytown Traffic Ticket

A couple of months ago I was pulled over for the first time (I know, I’m such a sheltered kid) and was cited for the despicable crime of having a non-functioning taillight. To be fair, I did know that something in the taillight assembly was a bit cocked, and I was putting off fixing the problem because of, well, laziness, and the fact that Volvo parts are expensive. What I didn’t expect was to be pulled over by a kid I’ve known since middle school, who now looks like your average 12 year old police officer. The conversation went something like this:

Officer Middle School: “Can I see your license and regist… oh, hi!”
Retaxis: “Holy crap! You’re a cop?”
Officer MS: “I get that a lot.”

It was, to be honest, a little surreal. A kid who probably gets carded at R-rated movies, wearing a Glock 17 and chunky Kevlar vest, and giving me a $50 ticket.

In any case, going to see the DA during his office hours was educational. The cops running security for the building were genuinely helpful, sending me off with a “third floor, turn right, second office down the corridor. Hope you get the ticket dismissed!” That was a touch that I didn’t expect. Even on duty, cops are human.

I had to wait in line for a half hour, behind a frat brother holding a noise violation, and a lawyer for three others who had received the same citation. See, a few months ago the Tinytown city council decided that they wanted to start enforcing the city noise ordinances for everybody, instead of letting the Ivy Leaguers have their fun and only getting involved for the more serious transgressions. As a result, the city and college police forces have been writing tickets by the hundreds, thoroughly clogging the city court system. This, of course, is a pain in the ass for everyone else, and it generates a ton of revenue.

Going before a judge, as I learned from the lawyer with whom I chatted, would invariably net you the maximum fine, which is $500 for a first offense and $750 for a second. That’s rent money by college kid standards. Going to the DA or the Assistant DA will probably get you down to the $200 to $350 range, unless the officer who wrote you the ticket says something nice. That will get you the minimum $100 fine.

The officers who show up at parties and write the piss-ant tickets have to write reports on everything that happened during the incident, which gets files into the city database and is accessible by the DA staff. The cops have to write up a narrative of the incident, including all sorts of minor details about the people at the party and their behavior. So here’s where the advice comes in:

If a cop shows up on your doorstep with a noise complaint, be very nice to him. Tell everyone to shut up, and keep the belligerent drunks away from the guys in uniform. Then cooperate, which means following the cops’ directions as if you were sober and in a good mood.

That’s it.

Can you figure out why this works? Because virtually every time the police show up, somebody does something stupid. Either somebody starts making fun of them, or somebody pees on the cruiser, or your stumpy wrestling buddy you call “Bucket” decides that he’s going to fight that sonofabitchholdmybeer. So, when you walk out onto the porch to meet them (you do know better than to invite them inside, right?) and nobody loses their head, the cops put that into the report.

No matter how you cut it, ten minutes of being civil to a pair of cops will save you $200 to $500. You know it’s a BS citation, and so do they.

That’s my legal advice for the day.

Oh, and the Tinytown ADA is a man who takes himself entirely too seriously. I had college professors like that, and it drove me nuts. The DA, on the other hand, is an actually living human with a working brain and heart. Seriously. Talk to him if you can.




In case you were wondering, the ticket was dismissed by the DA. I’m going to have a celebratory drink.

Retail Hell: Car Parts

In two sentences:
“No, the rear discs from your ’87 Firebird won’t bolt onto the hubs of your CJ-5.”
“Take the neon tubes out of your pant leg and stop trying to steal stuff!”

Oh, the seventh circle of hell is truly found within the doors of Autoplace (name changed to protect my sorry butt). This store, plunked as it was on the outskirts of Tinytown, served a population of two tribes: the white trash and the British car enthusiasts. The worst part about the Brit-car drivers was that they would 1) need the most obscure parts for their restorations, such as a 7mm hard brake line that gently flares out to fit a 9mm union at one end (and yes, we carried it), and 2) were perpetually lounging in the store with their elbows on the counter, telling the least probable stories that I’ve ever heard.

For instance, I once heard two tales of heroic driving and near-death experiences involving a Triumph TR-3 and a Corvette C5 Z-06 dueling on a twisty local road, with the Triumph taking the lead at the end by the tightest margin. While I don’t doubt the ability of a well driven TR-3 to beat a C5 around a tight course, I do doubt the ability of that particular TR-3, namely because I saw it barely run once, and it was in no shape to race a Huffy, much less a C5. That, and the second time I heard the story, the owner claimed to have lost to the Corvette because of a school bus coming up with road in the opposite lane and cutting off his last passing opportunity. Can’t splatter the kiddies over the countryside, don’tcha know.

Well, you can. But you probably shouldn’t.

The worst part about our white trash customers, on the other hand, was that they existed at all. These folks ranged from the merely stupid (which is aggravating but understandable) to the downright abusive. My first day on the job, actually, involved one fat old bastard buying new chrome lug nuts for his Pontiac Bonneville, cross-threading them, and then coming back into the store to holler at everyone working there for ruining his wheel studs.

And then there was the man who, having discovered a pinhole leak in his forward brake lines, pinched them off and drove eight miles to the Autoplace with only the rear drums on his pickup truck working.

Or the man who, as mentioned above, wanted to swap the rear discs from his Firebird to the front hubs of his CJ-5. When I looked up the parts (not that I needed to) and informed him that they wouldn't fit, he then inquired as to whether he could drill new holes in the discs to fit the bolt pattern on the Jeep, to which I replied that no, it would be dangerous without the proper tools. He showed up the following Monday evening with a need for a new rear disc, because he tried drilling anyway and ruined the disc and bored through the meat of his thumb. Which he showed us.

Other people were far more entertaining, the college students especially. Parents, if you’re going to go to the trouble of getting your kid into a premier Ivy League school, and the expense of buying them a brand new car, puh-leeeese spend five minutes teaching them how to take care of their machine. Or your son or daughter might end up being the source of limitless blogging material.

For instance: One Saturday morning we heard a Civic with the most awful rod knock come banging into the parking lot. I went out to investigate, being the helpful sort (she was cute). Our conversation went something like this.

Civic Driver: “I think there’s something wrong with my car.”
Retaxis: “Yeah, I could tell. Has it been making that noise for long?”
CD: “A couple of days.”
R: “When was the last time you had the oil changed?”
CD: (Shrugs) “The light on the dashboard has been on for a while. My boyfriend says it’s the oil light.”
R: “And how long has the idiot light been on?”
CD: “Four weeks.”

Folks, welcome to my world. This one event stuck in my memory because (she was cute) Eric and I got chewed out by the manager for laughing so hard in the parking lot that we cried, and Eric sat down in a puddle of antifreeze. Poor Civic Driver got an education on engine lubrication, after which she called her father and asked him to pay $4000 for a new engine.

Teach your kids. You get to spend time with them, and it’s cheaper in the end.

It wasn’t just the lady students who caught severe cases of ignorance from their parents. We had our fair share of entitled young turks come through to display their various boneheaded moments in the parking lot.

One Ivy League freshman in his brand new M3 showed up asking for “performance” spark plugs. Which I sold him, for $8.99 each. I figured (wrongly) that he would be happy with his newly released fifty horses, and that there was no way to screw up a spark plug change. Thirty seconds after returning the spark plug wrench, though, this freshman got in his brand new, gift-from-daddy-for-quitting-cocaine BMW M3, started the car, and immediately revved it to the redline. At which point the number 2 cylinder spark plug, which he had neglected to tighten, divorced itself from the cylinder head at high speed and artfully dented the lovely aluminum hood.

I recommended a good BMW repair shop, and found him the number in the phone book.

The more observant employees of Autoplace also caught shoplifters from time to time. While baggy pants are great for holding all your loot, I do tend to notice if you walk into the store without a problem, and then walk out again dragging your pin-straight leg. Yes, those neon tubes that you can stick under your car are cool, and if you really want to you can shove them down your pant leg. But I would appreciate it if you paid for them

Working Stiff

I have had several jobs since I turned 16 and discovered that cars and girlfriends cost more money than an allowance can afford. Some of these were good, fun, rewarding jobs: Coach, Cider Maker, Engineering Intern. Others, which some of you will nod at knowingly, were essentially unholy hell: Day Camp Counselor, Clothes Salesman, and Car Parts Salesman.

I don’t really count my translation and editing work as a job, because I do it more on a “oh, hey, I need cash” basis than on anything approaching a regular schedule.

As for the trio of jobs that I generously label as “not so good”, let me first say this: I am glad that I had those jobs, and I am equally glad that they are over. I don’t mean to insult anybody who does any of those for a living and loves it. In fact, I’m eternally grateful to you all for doing those jobs so that I don’t have to. I learned a lot selling car parts to rednecks and shirts to women of a certain age, and I can’t bring myself to be a jerk to any sales associate, cashier, or waiter because I’ve been there and dealt with the bullshit. But, damn, I was a horrible salesman.

The sales gigs came about because I needed something part-time while I was in school and I was singularly unqualified to do anything more interesting than minimum wage retail work. Most of you are familiar with this situation. It’s what my grandparents would have described as a “character building experience”.

And they would have been right, too, so far that as soon as I built up enough character to quit, I did.

Rattlecans

The new dining room chandelier arrived today, and I quickly set about finding an eye-bolt with which to hang the chandelier chain from a ceiling joist. The chain, though, is painted a matte black, which makes a zinc-plated steel eye-bolt stand out rather harshly. Being frugal, I decided that it wouldn't be a bad idea to see if the finely aged cans of spray paint in the basement would camouflage the steel.
Rooting around in the coffee cans that hold all the spare fasteners quickly turned up a suitably long eye-bolt and a dirty glare from the cat, who resented my stumping around her litter box while she does her dainty business. Some vigorous scrubbing with steel wool removed the corrosion from the loop, although I left the threads cruddy because I didn't intend to paint them anyway. I managed to turn up (oh, what bounty!) both black paint and primer from the shoebox that held the paints from my model rocketry days.
Come on, you know touching off miniature missiles is fun...
With the eye-bolt firmly screwed into a stiff piece of cardboard to serve as my backing, I set off into the backyard. The primer went on smooth, if a little thick, and with no ill effects from its advanced age as far as I could tell. When I returned with the actual paint 30 minutes later, though, I discovered that hadn't cleaned the spray top as well as I should have when I put the can into storage five years earlier.
At this point, in the interest of explaining my logic, I should introduce a rule often heard in engineering: If it won't work, hit it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
Ahem. This, in case you missed middle school English classes, is known as foreshadowing.
Naturally, then, faced with a spray nozzle that wouldn't depress properly, I inverted the can and gave it a firm whack on the nearest stone. No effect, which didn't dissuade me. Obviously the nozzle just needed a proper smack to free it up. Make it so!
The can of paint, at this point, didn't seem to appreciate being woken from its extended nap, and promptly puked up some gobbets of sticky material before going full-auto. I waved it in the general direction of the eye-bolt (remember the eye-bolt? this story is about the eye-bolt), ensured that there was full coverage, and then set about trying to stop the rattlecan. My first attempt was to grasp the top of the spray nozzle and pull up, which resulted in well-coated fingers and no appreciable reduction in the flow. Well, if that didn't do it, maybe I should just let the can empty itself over the lawn. Eh, no, lawns don't look nearly as good in Rustoleum satin black.
Nothing to it, then, but another hearty crack with a stone! And, wouldn't you know it, it worked. The rattlecan spat once and expired, and I was left with an eye-bolt that matches the chandelier very nicely.
I am so smart. And covered in paint.

Tragicomedy

As if we didn't have enough to worry about, what with certain streets we mustn't walk alone after dark, hurricanes doing their best "Shiva, destroyer of worlds" impression, and Wall Street going somewhat pear-shaped...
...Add rogue barbell weights to the list.
The gist of the article, in case the link shuffles off this mortal coil:

A 45-pound wheel-shaped weight being carried up Cornell University's Libe Slope during a drill by a member of the wrestling team got loose, rolled down the hill and hit a woman, knocking her down a flight of steps and causing serious injuries.

Now, this is going to be one of the few times in my life when knowing the person to whom this happened is actually going to make things funnier. No, seriously.
The article fails to capture exactly how unlikely this was. For those of you who don't know Libe Slope, it is a great green expanse, approximately a quarter mile long, below which sits the gothic dormitories that I always wanted to live in when I was little. Libe Slope is also the location of Slope Day, which you can Google yourself and which has no bearing on the accident.
So the 45lb round barbell weight is dropped and begins to roll downhill, as round things tend to do on hills. Not so strange. But the weight managed to roll clear to the bottom without hitting trees or students, cross the road between two moving cars, jump a curb, and then make a quick right-left-right dodge around the flagpole, through a gap in the stone wall behind the flagpole, and then make a flying leap onto the back of the person who happened to be at the top of the stairs at the time.
Unbelievable.
My first reaction (and likely hers) was a firm "WTF?", followed by skepticism, followed by laughter. Er, I doubt she managed the laughter part.
She is supposed to recover fully, though, so she'll probably have a chuckle over her mugging by a York barbell weight soon enough.

Welcome

To those of you who will be reading, whether regularly or occasionally, welcome!
Pour a drink, grab a notepad, read...
We'll see how this all works out.