i am baker's Pumpkin Cake -- Happy Halloween!

(cleverly disguised in keeping with the holiday's tradition!)

[i am baker]

Hope's Cookies, Bryn Mawr, PA

Spooktacular white chocolate strawberries

Location:Godiva

Winged Victory (200 BCE)

[images found on ARTstor]

Chanel's "Shade Parade"

Rablabs Candlesticks

Available here. (10% discount with code "FV2011" through the 31st!)

O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty seven cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again—you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jeweled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.


[TeacherVision]

What's the best way to patch a wound? With a PUMPKIN patch.

Our more humble creations from the weekend... 

Fresh Ricotta with Olive oil and Dark Chocolate from Vosges Haut-Chocolat

Ingredients:
2 cups (or lbs.) Fresh Ricotta Cheese
3 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil (try Barilla)
A pinch Pink salt (try Murray’s River)
A pinch White Pepper
1 1/2 ounces Dark Chocolate (try 65% dark, Venezuelan)

Directions:
Place Ricotta in a dish. Stir in salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil. Chop dark chocolate into fine slivers and sprinkle atop. Serve with crackers.

Katrina's Serving Suggestion:

Serve this Ricotta with an hors d’oeuvre plate, including nuts, cherries, a few other cheeses, and some black pepper crackers. 

[peace, love, & chocolate]

Winter Squash -- Tips

1. ORANGE HOKKAIDO	2. BUTTERCUP	3. SUGAR PUMPKIN	4. HUBBARD	5. DELICATA	6. CARNIVAL	7. KABOCHA
Super-squash-tasters detect notes of chestnut in this teardrop-shaped Hubbard relative, which resembles a ridgeless pumpkin and also goes by the name red kuri.	Essentially a sweet potato trapped in the body of a winter squash, with a fine-grained, bright-orange flesh and an exceptionally sweet flavor. Halve it, bake it, add butter, and you may never look at another squash again.	Save those giant field specimens for the front porch or the state fair; this is the pumpkin you want for pumpkin pie.	Get out the wheelbarrow—this toothsome behemoth can weigh over twenty pounds, but proves that in the world of winter squash, bigger is sometimes better.	Among the tastiest of all winter squash, with sweet and starchy, non-stringy flesh. It's great steamed or roasted, even better sliced into rings and deep-fried the way Dan Kluger has done at ABC Kitchen.	Like Acorn, a good single-serving-size squash with dense texture and pleasingly sweet meat.	If you've had tempura, you've likely had Kabocha, a word which generically means "squash" in Japanese, but specifically refers to a Buttercup-like variety that's rich, sweet, and densely textured.
8. ROUGE VIF D'ETAMPES	9. TURK'S TURBAN	10. ACORN	11. CHEESE PUMPKIN	12. SWEET LIGHTNING	13. BUTTERNUT
The model for Cinderella's coach, they say, and an heirloom variety long loved by the French more for its chic style than its stringy substance.	A close relative of the Buttercup, but not as sweet or tasty. It makes a fine centerpiece, though, or a first-rate paperweight, provided you have a gigantic desk.	Size-wise, it's the anti-Hubbard. The deep-green-black variety pictured is called Table Queen, and it lives up to its name in its dominance over the domestic squash market.	A real looker but a poor performer in the taste and texture department, this tropical variety's named for its resemblance to a wheel of fromage.	Not just a pretty face, these Delicata cousins are high in sugar and have smooth, creamy flesh. Poke some holes in one and toss it into the office microwave for lunch.	There is little you can't do with this multipurpose squash: Bake it, simmer it, steam it, or make soup. Beneath the distinctive bell-shaped, beige-hued shell, the deeper orange the color, the sweeter the flesh.

[NYMag]

Uccello's Deluge (1447)

[Columbia University]

Mosaic Pavement with a Bird in a Cage

Synagogue of Ma'on, 6th Century

[Lessing Archives]

Outlined Headboard

[Vosges Paris via because i'm addicted]

Favorite Recipe of the Weekend -- Chicken Marbella

Chicken Marbella

Although the original recipe calls for 2 small chickens to be quartered, you could easily do this recipe with 5 pounds of chicken pieces, thighs and breasts.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 chickens, 2 1/2 lbs each, quartered, bone-in, skin-on
• 1/2 head of garlic, peeled and finely puréed
• 2 Tbsp dried oregano
• Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup pitted prunes
• 8 large pitted Spanish green olives, cut in half
• 1/4 cup capers with a bit of juice
• 3 bay leaves
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 2 Tbsp fresh Italian parsley, finely chopped

METHOD

1 In a large bowl combine garlic, oregano, salt and pepper to taste, vinegar, olive oil, prunes, olives, capers with caper juice, and bay leaves. Add the chicken pieces and coat completely with the marinade. Cover and let marinate, refrigerated, several hours or overnight.

2 Preheat oven to 350°F. Arrange chicken in a single layer in one or two large, shallow baking pans and spoon marinade over it evenly. Sprinkle chicken pieces with brown sugar and pour white wine around them.

3 Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, basting frequently with the pan juices. Chicken is done when thigh pieces, pricked with a fork at their thickest point, yield clear yellow juice (not pink).

4 With a slotted spoon, transfer chicken, prunes, olives, and capers to a serving platter. Add some of the pan juices and sprinkle generously with parsley or cilantro. Serve remaining juice in a gravy boat.

Yield: Serves 5-8 (or 4 heavyweight rowers...)

[Source: The Silver Palate Cookbook via Simply Recipes]

It is a risk to love.
What if it doesn't work out?
Ah, but what if it does.
-- Peter McWilliams

bigburgernyc.blogspot.com

Black-Tie Strawberries

... for a very special occasion:

STRAWBERRY TUXEDO RECIPE (from Cafe Fernando) 

Ingredients

• 15 strawberries
• 3 ounces bittersweet chocolate
• 3 ounces white chocolate

Method

1. Chop chocolates and place in separate bowls.
2. Place these bowls over a pot of barely simmering water and let stand until melted.
3. Stir until smooth, set aside and let cool for a few minutes.
4. Dip strawberries in white chocolate and place on a baking sheet. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.
5. Dip sides of the strawberries in bitter chocolate. Back to the refrigerator for 10 more minutes.
6. Dip a thin paint brush in bitter chocolate and draw the bow tie and buttons.

[Cafe Fernando]

Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror

Parmigianino's Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (c. 1524)

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror - John Ashbery

As Parmigianino did it, the right hand Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer And swerving easily away, as though to protect What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams, Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together In a movement supporting the face, which swims Toward and away like the hand Except that it is in repose. It is what is Sequestered. Vasari says, "Francesco one day set himself To take his own portrait, looking at himself from that purpose In a convex mirror, such as is used by barbers . . . He accordingly caused a ball of wood to be made By a turner, and having divided it in half and Brought it to the size of the mirror, he set himself With great art to copy all that he saw in the glass," Chiefly his reflection, of which the portrait Is the reflection, of which the portrait Is the reflection once removed. The glass chose to reflect only what he saw Which was enough for his purpose: his image Glazed, embalmed, projected at a 180-degree angle. The time of day or the density of the light Adhering to the face keeps it Lively and intact in a recurring wave Of arrival. The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest? The surface Of the mirror being convex, the distance increases Significantly; that is, enough to make the point That the soul is a captive, treated humanely, kept In suspension, unable to advance much farther Than your look as it intercepts the picture. Pope Clement and his court were "stupefied" By it, according to Vasari, and promised a commission That never materialized. The soul has to stay where it is, Even though restless, hearing raindrops at the pane, The sighing of autumn leaves thrashed by the wind, Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay Posing in this place. It must move As little as possible. This is what the portrait says. But there is in that gaze a combination Of tenderness, amusement and regret, so powerful In its restraint that one cannot look for long. The secret is too plain. The pity of it smarts, Makes hot tears spurt: that the soul is not a soul, Has no secret, is small, and it fits Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention. That is the tune but there are no words. The words are only speculation (From the Latin speculum, mirror): They seek and cannot find the meaning of the music. We see only postures of the dream, Riders of the motion that swings the face Into view under evening skies, with no False disarray as proof of authenticity. But it is life englobed. One would like to stick one's hand Out of the globe, but its dimension, What carries it, will not allow it. No doubt it is this, not the reflex To hide something, which makes the hand loom large As it retreats slightly. There is no way To build it flat like a section of wall: It must join the segment of a circle, Roving back to the body of which it seems So unlikely a part, to fence in and shore up the face On which the effort of this condition reads Like a pinpoint of a smile, a spark Or star one is not sure of having seen As darkness resumes. A perverse light whose Imperative of subtlety dooms in advance its Conceit to light up: unimportant but meant. Francesco, your hand is big enough To wreck the sphere, and too big, One would think, to weave delicate meshes That only argue its further detention. (Big, but not coarse, merely on another scale, Like a dozing whale on the sea bottom In relation to the tiny, self-important ship On the surface.) But your eyes proclaim That everything is surface. The surface is what's there And nothing can exist except what's there. There are no recesses in the room, only alcoves, And the window doesn't matter much, or that Sliver of window or mirror on the right, even As a gauge of the weather, which in French is Le temps, the word for time, and which Follows a course wherein changes are merely Features of the whole. The whole is stable within Instability, a globe like ours, resting On a pedestal of vacuum, a ping-pong ball Secure on its jet of water. And just as there are no words for the surface, that is, No words to say what it really is, that it is not Superficial but a visible core, then there is No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience. You will stay on, restive, serene in Your gesture which is neither embrace nor warning But which holds something of both in pure Affirmation that doesn't affirm anything.

Matthew Williamson + Ladurée = swoooon!

[Image Source: WWD]

Shout out to SPK for the tip ! :)

Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga - The Lady Is A Tramp

A Folded Victory for Folded Victory

Classical Gold Diadem at the Metropolitan Museum, NYC

Folded Victory's online store has finally launched: FoldedVictory.com!

From now until the end of October, use the code "FV2011" for 10% off all orders. ...It's never too early to start shopping for the holidays! ;)

Bruegel's Peasant's Wedding (1568)

[Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.]

Bob Dylan's Asian Series

On view through October 22 at Gagosian Gallery: 980 Madison Avenue, NYC

Bob Dylan, The Monk, 2009

[Gagosian Gallery]

John Donne's The Canonization

FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
    Or chide my palsy, or my gout ;
    My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;
        Take you a course, get you a place,
        Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
    Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
    So you will let me love.

Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love?
    What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
    Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
        When did the heats which my veins fill
        Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
    Litigious men, which quarrels move,
    Though she and I do love.

Call's what you will, we are made such by love ;
    Call her one, me another fly,
    We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
        The phoenix riddle hath more wit
        By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
    We die and rise the same, and prove
    Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
    And if unfit for tomb or hearse
    Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
        We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
        As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
    And by these hymns, all shall approve
    Us canonized for love ;

And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
    Made one another's hermitage ;
    You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
        Into the glasses of your eyes ;
        So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize—
    Countries, towns, courts beg from above
    A pattern of your love."

Pisanello's Drawings of Animals

[ARTstor]

How To Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds by Saveur

Claire Robinson's Pumpkin Burger

Tools: knife, lettuce, hamburger patties, cheese, tomatoes, superglue
[Food Network]

October 1.