This blog is on hiatus for an indetermined period of time. It has been fun, but I must stop. I will miss Tuesdays With Dorie, and the bloggers with whom I have connected.

Most days, my job involves sending a lot of emails, making a few calls, fighting the urge to strangle people, and trying to think creatively in the midst of it all. Few people know what I mean when I say that I am an acquisitions editor, because most people think editor=correcting grammar and typos.

An acquisitions editor basically thinks up book ideas and then finds someone to write the books. Basically. We’re the ones who give authors a contract. Occasionally, people send proposals and even manuscripts directly to the publisher, and these (“over the transom”) projects are directed to the acquisitions editor. We are the first hurdle; we read the materials and decide on the worth and value of a project. If we like it, we see a market for it, and/or it is a fit to our list, we move forward. But the fun part of the job, the creative part, is the less passive part. It involves my really knowing my list, my field, and understanding that a book on Topic X will be just the right book to crystallize a topic. To help organize a new course. To translate really cool science into a book for the typical Barnes & Noble reader. So I have the book on Topic X in my mind, and then I identify just the right person to write it, and woo her or him. Heavy emphasis on the woo. And you know that wooing frequently involves food.

Since I work in academic publishing, an important part of my job revolves around attending academic conferences – my reason for being in Sacramento. Here they are, all together in one place. Easy as shooting fish in a barrel, more or less. All the other academic publishers are here too, of course, and we’re all after the same people. It can be a brutal battle, at times.

But here’s the eating part of my job, and the reason for this post. When I am attending a conference, here is the bare bones of my daily routine. Each and every day of the conference.

• 7am breakfast meeting
• 8am breakfast meeting
• 9am coffee meeting
• 9:30 coffee
• 10:00 coffee
• 10:30 coffee
• 11:00 coffee
• 11:30 coffee
• noon lunch meeting
• 1pm lunch meeting
• 2:00 coffee
• 2:30 coffee
• 3:00 coffee
• 3:30 coffee
• 4:00 coffee
• 4:30 coffee (or drinks)
• 5:00 drinks
• 5:30 drinks
• 6:00 drinks
• 7:00 dinner meeting with one or multiple potential authors
• 9:00 dessert and/or drinks meeting
• 10:00 attend party, if there is an important one

Every. Single. Day. Oh sure, you learn tricks; you only have fruit at the first breakfast meeting, and only half a bagel at the second. A small salad at the first lunch meeting, and a bowl of soup at the second. Sips of coffee throughout the day. Never finish your glass of wine. Still, by the end of the day, OY.  And if I have any openings in my schedule, I attend talks and symposia, so I can stay abreast of the new hot stuff going on. 

I’ll get home very late on Sunday night and need to be at work first thing Monday morning. I don’t exactly know how I’m going to get my TWD baking done. We’ll see. For now, though, my first breakfast meeting awaits.

I am in Sacramento, CA for a few days attending an academic conference. Anyone know of a great spot to eat? What shouldn’t I miss? I’m staying downtown.

And here I thought this week’s post would be easier than any other: my lovely food model was visiting us in person! Marnie in Manhattan, three of my favorite words. She arrived just after midnight Friday, giving me the most perfect opportunity to accomplish two things at once, Saturday morning: make my Dorie recipe for the week, and have some warm, delicious muffins waiting for her when she woke up. Domestic, cozy home bliss. And I was thinking about all the photos I could take of her with the muffins, eating the muffins, looking quizzically at the muffins (she does quizzical very well), reading the cookbook, us together eating muffins, etc. It’d make a cute blog post.

But you know what happens, don’t you. You eat! You talk, you drink coffee together. You get quenched in enjoying this wonderful and very precious time together. And somehow you don’t get the photos. So you know, I had to make do. But first, here’s one of us at an incredible park we visited on Saturday, doing what we do best together: talking.

i could eat her up with a spoon. pay no attention to the really bulky clothes, it was so cold!

And – by the way – the muffins were tasty. Except for gathering and measuring all the spices, they were very quick and easy to assemble, like any other muffin. Soft and tender, pumpkiney and nutty. All you’d want in a pumpkin muffin. To be honest (I hate to always be so grumpy!), there was nothing that made them so outstandingly different in my mind from any other pumpkin muffin I’ve ever made, so the next time I think “hey, pumpkin muffin!” I am not certain that my automatic response will be this one. It’s great, it’s fine, it’s lovely, it’s tasty, because it’s a pumpkin muffin and I like pumpkin muffins.

yummy squared: a muffin with melty butter! but no raisins, no way. i know y'all say "hey, these are different," but they're my muffins and i say no raisins.

Here’s my playing-around detail, for your consideration. Personally, I thought the sunflower seeds on Dorie’s photo made the muffins look messy, somehow. And why sunflower seeds? Why not pumpkin seeds? (A), they’re pumpkin muffins, and (B), sunflower seeds bring in a very different taste. But anyway, I didn’t have either one, so it’s a moo point, as Joey Trebbiani once said. Instead, I took some of the toasted pecan bits and tossed them in a good bit of brown sugar and sprinkled that mixture on top of the muffin batter. It turned into a really wonderful crisp sweet kind of light glaze topping. I’m always going to do this from now on. YUM.

if you click to enlarge you'll see the crackling glisten on the left muffin half. it was REALLY good.

And, as always, I end the post with two things: (1) a salute to this week’s decider: Kelly, great choice for this particular week! She’ll have the recipe on her lovely blog, Sounding My Barbaric Gulp, but if you have the book, just turn to page 13. You may want to check out the blogroll to see what everyone else did with this! And (2), a very special photo of the muffin.

awww......she's so tough and adorable! and the muffin ain't bad, either.

Have a great week, y’all. And don’t forget my giveaway! You can play if your birthday is in November, or if your birthday is not in November. The deadline is October 29, so put down the fiddle right now and play along!

Well! I just got an idea. In my silly unbirthday post a couple of days ago, Teanna (of Spork and Foon, head over right now if you don’t already subscribe!) revealed that she’s also a November baby…the day after my birthday, as a matter of fact. Which is November 6. In case you forgot.

[side note that's kind of embarrassing but I'll tell you: I am a very serious person but I've got some silly bits too. I won't reveal them all, but this one is relevant so here goes. Whenever I happen to see the clock and it's 11:06 I think it's the magic minute. I have NO idea where that phrase came from. My birthday, 11/06, November 6. If I happen to see 11:06, I become very excited and announce to anyone around me that it's the magic minute. And I want a kiss, if we have that kind of relationship. Or a small gift. Just an FYI, if we ever hang out together.]

So I’m silly about my birthday. But it’s not wholly narcissistic! I’m silly about yours, too! In fact, I’m preparing to be silly about anyone whose birthday is in November. Won’t you bake us a cake? If your birthday is in November, leave a comment with the date and let’s have a big virtual birthday party! There’s no such thing as too much cake, right? If you know someone with a November birthday, send ‘em here. If your birthday is in one of the other 11 months, what’s your favorite birthday cake to make for someone special like us? Let’s have the big cake party on November 1! So just to be clear, there are two ways to enter: (1) your birthday is in November – so tell us the date in the comments, or (2) your birthday is not in November, but you’ll send cake. Send it no later than October 29.

I’m going to be en route to Santa Fe, NM that day, so I want to get it queued up before I go; so please send me a link to the best birthday goodie you’ve posted about, especially if you include a photo. The deadline is October 29. I’ll assemble the buffet and will schedule it to publish on November 1. Email me at lusciousfood at gmail dot com. (you can just click that link, by the way).

If you participate in any way – as a birthday person or as a cake baker, you will be entered into a drawing for a copy of The Art and Soul of Baking. Come to the party, won’t you?!

And of course, happy unbirthday to us today!

It’s an exciting night – the final presidential debate, a lot on the line for McCain and an extraordinary degree of interest in this election….which is thrilling. It’s thrilling to have hope and be interested and not cynical and jaded. It’s not so thrilling that we’re in the current situation (is there ANYTHING that Bush hasn’t screwed up?), but at least people are sitting up and paying attention.

And my Darling Chef has made the most delicious smelling beef stew, with a red wine-rich broth, chock full of everything I love in a beef stew. And Anna will be with us for dinner; she’s 17 years old and brilliant (if I do say so) and completely engaged in news and politics. Sounds wonderful, right?!

Colbert. Of course.

Aasif Mandvi

And I won’t be doing any of it. Instead, I’ve got a ticket to Symphony Space Selected Shorts, to listen to David Rakison (author and contributor to This American Life), Aasiv Mandvi (“reporter” on the Daily Show) and Stephen Colbert – no intro necessary – read selected short stories on stage.

I had a ticket to hear Salman Rushdie read, but I was in the hospital. Bitter, missing that one, I’m telling you.

Do you listen to Selected Shorts? You can listen on the radio, or download the podcasts. They are wonderful, especially if you love stories and words and live performance. I love all those things. Of course I also love beef stew and the debate (well….love might be a little strong for the debates, but still), but there’s only one of me so what to do.

First, regarding the previous post about my new cookbooks, they’re both incredible and amazing, and I’ll be writing a review of each AND posting as I cook my way through them. But I wanted to send you to the website for The Art and Soul of Baking, if you haven’t already seen it. It’s a blog, so you can put it in your aggregator, and it features a good portion of material from the book so you can get a real feel for it. I am an acquiring editor for a major publisher, and I have to say that this is the way we all need to be going. That blog is the reason I bought the book. I saw two posts and went to Amazon and bought the book, within minutes of seeing it online. Publishers mistakenly think that if they give away free content, they’ll sap their market. Oh no, my friend (horrors if I sound like McCain there!). Seeing the content encourages the purchase. I’ll save the rest for my book review, later.

And the second thing is that Marnie is coming for a visit this weekend, from Chicago. She’s in her first semester of an MFA program and has classes near the end of the week, so she can make it a 3-day weekend slopping over into Monday. I don’t know about you, but I always make my TWD recipe over the weekend and post for Tuesdays, so I really look forward to making the pumpkin muffins for my real live girl. So next Tuesday, one of the photos will include Marnie as always, but with a different twist.

Now if I could only get my older girl Katie here for a visit……

Although my birthday approaches – the big 5-0, on November 6 to be exact – today is my unbirthday. In the immortal words of Robert B. Sherman (if you don’t hang out with young Disney-loving kids):

Now statistics prove
Prove that you’ve one birthday
Imagine just one birthday every year
Ah, but there are 364 unbirthdays
Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer

A very merry unbirthday
To me?
To you
A very merry unbirthday
For me?
For you
Now blow the candle out, my dear
And make your wish come true
A very merry unbirthday to you!

So, as I’m getting older and wiser I’ve learned the wisdom of being gentle with myself. Put myself down for having some extra junk in my trunk? I just don’t have that kind of time any more. Being a little more forgetful than I used to be? My poor old sweet brain, trying so hard. And even though, during those l-o-n-g years of having small children and having to listen to movies and songs over and over and over (are/were yours like that?), I came to hate the Unbirthday Song, I now see the wisdom. Why wait for just one day to celebrate yourself!

In that spirit, I bought myself a couple of new cookbooks:

the art and soul of baking AND the bread baker

I need some new baking challenges – not that Tuesdays With Dorie is a piece of cake, every week….some times it’s a cookie or a biscotti. But you know, I want to dig in a little harder to some great breads. And of course I’ll post the results here. For now, I’m going to pour a glass of unbirthday wine, put on some unbirthday music, put my beautiful almost 50-year old feet up, and pore through my new unbirthday books.

A very merry unbirthday to YOU too (unless it’s your birthday!).

Long ago, when we made those oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chipsters, and I had very tall stacks of them standing together, it just struck me that it looked like a forest of some kind. That I could play with the perspective, make them look even bigger, if I Photoshopped a picture of a person in, shrunk to fit. So I dug through my millions of photos to find one of a person standing in a way that would look just right. I found one of my 2nd daughter, Marnie, standing in the Grande Place in Brussels. So I carefully cut her out, shrunk the picture, popped her amid the towers, and posted. It was fun. I liked it, and got a couple of comments that it made other people smile, too.

And thus a tradition was born.

I have four children: my oldest daughter Katie is shy about having her picture made. Just doesn’t like the results — though I do! (hint hint, Katie.) So I don’t have all that many of her, and the ones I do have tend to be of her sitting, or standing with a group. Marnie, the 2nd girl, is a combination of ham and photographically-minded (and an artist with her own blog). The pictures I use of her are not taken for these posts, at all; I just have dozens and dozens that scream to be used. There’s one of her inside a turtle shell at the Brooklyn Zoo that will turn up one of these days. So she’s easy, she gives me a lot to work with. My son Will is fascinated by taking photos of himself (literally, I have thousands of him) but they’re generally arms-length shots of him making silly faces. Hundreds of his nostrils. Really. And my daughter Anna takes a lot of photos with herself and friends, but I don’t tend to get copies….too bad, because she’s also extremely photogenic.

So I hope you enjoy the silliness; it always makes me laugh to do it, and it makes me happy when it makes you laugh, too.

With most sincere apologies to Dickens, it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times with this one. This week’s recipe was a really tasty biscotti, which I happen to adore. Almond extract, not so much, but big deal! Variation is the spice of life, and of course Dorie offered several suggestions and it’s so easy to think of dozens of your own. Biscotti, yum. So before I dig in, thanks Gretchen, of Canela & Comino, for picking this one. The timing was really nice, with the cooler temperatures of early fall making steaming mugs of coffee sound even better than usual, perfect for the dunking of biscotti. If you don’t have the cookbook, she’ll have the recipe on her blog; otherwise, turn to p. 141 and take notes.

See, this is the deal. If you’re part of this baking project, you know that every week, there’s a post on the group blog for members to ask questions, report problems and solutions, and discuss their experiences making the recipe. In fact, that’s one of the coolest parts of this whole endeavor, if you ask me. I always tend to assume that the problem is me, but when dozens of us have the same problems, methinks the problem is in the stars…..or the recipe. 

First things first: very easy recipe to make, and did y’all taste the dough?! Oh. My. God. I could’ve just eaten the whole bowl with a spoon. That’s definitely the “best of times” part of this recipe. Since I don’t like almond extract, I just used vanilla, and I added a good dash of cinnamon because hey. Like Grace, I think cinnamon is always a good idea. YUM.

dough before baking - looks like a nice log, right? they were the exact dimensions stated in the recipe: 12" long, and 1.5" wide. i floured my hands to help shape the relatively wet dough.

But here’s the worst of times part: s-p-r-e-a-d. After I did the first bake, the dough had spread out like mad. And it was at that point that I remembered reading, days before, that other members reported the same problem. When I saw how they’d spread out, I thought about making biscotti straws, just very long and thin crispy straws. But I forged ahead. Oh, and also as other members reported, the baking time required was certainly (and considerably) longer than the recipe noted. This seems to be a recurring problem with the recipes in this book!

after the first bake; look at that back log! i wish i knew how to type the sound of a raspberry. pblhhhhh.

After slicing the semi-baked dough into long strips on the diagonal, I baked them again, per the recipe. But 15 minutes? Are you serious, Dorie?! They were nowhere near finished after 15 minutes. And I know it’s not my oven, so don’t even go there. I thought about previous biscotti recipes I’d made, and lowered the temperature to 215 and let them dry out for a couple of hours. And at the end? SHEER HEAVEN. The wonderful crispy taste of these cookies ensures that I’ll be making the dough again. I just won’t follow the crazy baking instructions with this recipe (and I’ll intensely chill the dough before popping it in the oven).

Love Song for a Biscotti (with gratitude to Dr. Seuss)

I would eat these on a rug,
I would eat these with a mug (of coffee). 

I might eat these with a beer,
I would eat these with a deer.

I would eat these near and far,
I would eat these in a jar.

Biscotti good. Lenox Almond Biscotti, extremely good. Baking directions, bad. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Check out the blogroll to see how the hundreds of other bakers fared — gorgeous photos, fun stories, and the general derring-do that characterizes us all.