David Dubrow's Blog, page 61

Breadhead Friday: Ciabatta

My go-to bread recipe is Jason's Quick Coccodrillo Ciabatta bread.  The term "quick" can be a bit of a misnomer in our gotta-have-it-now society, as it takes more than three hours to make, but compared to other breads with overnight rises and a dozen ingredients, it can't be beat.


Puffy, wobbly, but on the peel
The simplicity of it is incredible.  It's only made of four things: flour, water, salt, and yeast.  And somehow it provides flavor that's way beyond what you'd expect for something so basic.  The crumb is pleasantly chewy, and the inside is almost creamy in texture, full of those big holes that artisan bakers love to achieve.
Goodness baked right in
This is the bread my favorite pizza crust recipe is based on.  There are a few tricks to it, like placing the fragile, wobbly loaves onto a peel without ruining the air pockets, but once you have that down, you have bread that truly unlocks the flavors trapped in the wheat.
Your obligatory cross-section
The dough's terribly wet and sticky, and doesn't behave the way you'd like it to.  You can't really shape it, but if you wanted, you could put it on a parchment-lined French bread pan and make a cylinder out of it.  It needs the flour to grab onto, so you can't just oil everything for this one: you need to dust the parchment and the dough with plenty of flour to get it right.
Look, look!  I got the big holes!
If you like good, simple bread, make this ciabatta.  I've done a little experimenting with putting herbs and powdered garlic into the dough, but the best treat is just eating it straight.  You would not believe that plain white flour, salt, water, and yeast could taste so good.

Robin Williams, My Mother, and Me

Like most people old enough to remember the 1970's and 80's, my first memories of Robin Williams were of his role in Mork & Mindy .  I loved the show; my favorite episode was the one where Mork, through the use of over-the-counter cold medication, accidentally shrank himself out of our universe and into a parallel one.  To a nine-year-old, this was mind-ripping stuff.

Robin Williams - Live at the Met remains one of my all-time favorite stand-up routines, right next to Eddie Murphy - Delirious .  Thank you, HBO and PRISM, for broadcasting those laughs a dozen times a day.
I never saw Dead Poets Society, Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Will Hunting, Patch Adams, or several other of the movies that made Williams so beloved and famous.  I liked What Dreams May Come, despite its somewhat maudlin tone.  And he was quite good in The Final Cut; as a former video editor, the film struck a real chord with me.  
That's pretty much the extent of my experience with his work.  I'm really quite unsentimental when it comes to actors.  I respect what they do, and most of them live lives that are entirely irrelevant to mine.
In the wake of his death, there are renewed calls for a "national conversation" about mental illness, including clinical depression, and I understand.  We all want to make sense of terrible things (most of the time we can't), and we all want to make sure they don't happen again (ditto).  The problem is that a national conversation won't help anyone.
A national conversation wouldn't have helped my mother, who committed suicide a little over a year ago.
She had been a substance abuser her entire adult life.  Pills, alcohol, you name it.  I suffered abuse from her in ways that I'm quite unable to discuss with anyone.  When my father was dying of cancer, she would steal some of his pain and sleep medications for her own use.  That was what her mental illness, her addiction, made her into.
And none of us ever discussed it.  Not when we were kids, and very little when we became adults.  We didn't discuss it with her, my father, or anyone else.  Denial comes in many forms, and not talking about something is vastly easier than talking about it.  
Becoming a father myself and watching my wife become a loving mother to our little boy forced me to confront a lot of the unresolved issues related to my mother's substance abuse.  Mainly, I resolved to give my son a different set of childhood experiences from mine.  That will redound to his benefit, I'm certain.
About a year and a half after my father died, my mother ended her own life.  This is the eulogy I wrote for her funeral:
What my mother did to herself is a dark, terrible thing, but it would be worse if we didn’t learn anything from it.  She suffered greatly from mental illness, and a symptom of that was her substance abuse.  It was, unfortunately, one of the more significant elements of her character, and all of my memories of her are colored by it.
What made her illness all the more cruel was that she was capable of good things, and I know that she wanted to be better than she was.  She just couldn’t.
Substance abuse is very easily denied, both by the abuser and the people around the abuser.  The problem is that denying it doesn’t make it go away.  As difficult as it is, it has to be confronted and acknowledged.  Only then can it be treated.
With my mother, that didn’t happen.  
She won’t get to see her grandchildren grow up and become successful.  She won’t get to visit her husband’s gravesite and reminisce.  She didn’t get the treatment she needed, nor would she have accepted it if it were offered.  Her last days involved intolerable suffering.  
If we can learn from that, perhaps she didn’t die in vain.  
My intent here is not to bleed all over Williams's casket.  His death isn't about me or my mother.  Everyone reading this very likely has good memories associated with watching him, and that's a nice thing.  He'd have liked that, I'm sure.  But as loved a figure as he was, it wasn't enough.
My mother, who in her later years became a more and more vitriolic, divisive character, didn't stand a chance.  
I can't pretend to know what life was like in the Williams household, nor would I presume to.  But, like everything, it's vital that we take what happened and learn from it.  Don't just have a national conversation.  Have a personal conversation.

Perhaps they talked about it all day long, and Williams got so sick of it, he had to find a permanent way out.  I don't know.  Just don't sweep it under the rug.  Such concealed monsters don't stay under there, and they don't get smaller from concealment: quite the opposite.  They tend to take over the whole house.
So we'll grieve now, and for the lucky majority of us, the grief will be short-lived.  Questions of "why" and "what should I have done differently" are for others to ask, which is a blessing.  We're spared the pain his closest associates and family must feel, and my sympathies lie with them.  
Whether depressives self-medicate through alcohol or alcoholics are depressed because of their addiction is immaterial: the point is that denying a family problem never solves it.  As ugly and terrible and uncomfortable as it is, you must acknowledge it; only then can treatment begin.

Rest in peace, Robin.  I wish that you hadn't done what you did.

Book Review: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad

It gives me no pleasure at all to write a review like this.  I'm intimately familiar with what it takes to write a novel with multiple characters, attempting to describe events that are epic in scope.  And I understand that not every book is going to appeal to every reader.  You can decide that you don't like a book, but acknowledge that it's a difference of personal taste, not the book's quality.  Nevertheless, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad is an objectively bad book that should never have been foisted upon the reading public.

I tried extremely hard to like it.  It promised to describe a very interesting period in the Dune universe: what caused humanity to throw away advanced computer technology in such a way as to refer to it as a jihad?

Well, you can keep asking, because this answer is terrible.  There's nothing about it that's worth your time.  Here are some of the low points:

1) The chapter introductions are trite and without insight.  Take this chapter introduction from DTBJ (Dune: The Butlerian Jihad): "When humans created a computer with the ability to collect information and learn from it, they signed the death warrant of mankind."  Not particularly penetrating, that.  Why bother reading the rest of the book after that?  Contrast it with this chapter intro from Dune: "There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man - with human flesh."  That tells you something.  You can agree with it or not, but it's a great insight into what Paul-Muad'Dib thought.  There's none of that in DTBJ.  The characters and plotting likewise lack depth.

Sandworm: "Ow."
2) The writing tells you everything without bothering to go through the whole rigmarole of showing you anything.  An example: "He was a serious young man, prone to honesty and with a tendency to see things in black and white....Much admired by his superiors, Xavier had been promoted quickly; equally respected by his soldiers, he was the sort of trusted man they would follow into battle."  Oh.  Well, great.  I don't suppose there's any way the writers could have demonstrated these traits for us in the dialogue or action of the book.  Instead, the reader is beaten over the head with this kind of information.  Clumsy.  Terribly clumsy.  The writers don't give us the opportunity to judge the characters on their own merits, and instead tell us what to think.

3) The best parts are glossed over, and the story is mundane.  Evil brains-in-a-jar cyborgs called cymeks begin the novel by attacking a planet.  These cymeks have names like Ajax, Agamemnon, and Tlaloc, but don't act like their namesakes, and there's little backstory described or told about their origins.  We get ugly little infodumps about them like cat crottes in a litterbox instead.  None of that intricate weaving of history and current action that we'd come to love from Frank Herbert's work.  The reasons for voluntarily relinquishing one's own humanity go entirely unexplored here.

DTBJ was a New York Times bestseller, published by Macmillan.  And it's awful.  Tell me again how self-published books are the scourge of literary quality, and that the more self-published crap gets out there, the less likely it is great, properly-vetted books will be read.  The gatekeepers missed this one.  Big time.

I got 11% in and had to stop reading.  Don't do what I did and buy it.  Learn from my mistake.  Save yourself.

Breadhead Friday: Pizza Sauce Recipe

Pursuant to the post on making pizza at home, I want to give out my recipe for pizza sauce.  It's easy, quick, and tasty.  There's a brightness to it from the red wine vinegar, a little heat from the red pepper flake, and enough spices to give it great flavor, but not overwhelm the toppings and crust.

And the best part is that you don't have to cook it.  The sauce cooks on the pizza itself.

This recipe is the product of trial and error across dozens of pizzas, and will make enough sauce to cover five (5) average-sized pies.

Ingredients
1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes
1 28 oz. can of tomato puree
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 and 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tbsp basil
1 and 1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
A few shakes of red pepper flake
Salt to taste

Mise en place
All you have to do is put the ingredients into a bowl and mix them with a whisk.  Couldn't be easier.

In the bowl, ready to be whisked
Once you've got it mixed together, give it a little taste.  I know it's not cooked, but it'll be okay, I promise.  The tomatoes have been steamed as part of the canning process.  If it needs salt, add salt.

All mixed up
If you use the pizza recipe linked at the top of this post, you'll see that the pizza is baked at a pretty high heat (500 degrees F or higher).  So you don't need to cook the sauce: it's a thin layer on the dough that will get cooked as part of the baking process.

The sauce is on the pizza - REPEAT: the sauce is on the pizza
Portion out the sauce into five containers and freeze or refrigerate them as you see fit.  You may want to make this sauce a couple hours before making the pizza to allow the flavors to meld.

The distribution of pepperoni here is reminiscent of the Tunguska Explosion of 1908
There you go.  Now you've got one less excuse to go to Pizza Hut.  Not that there's anything wrong with Pizza Hut.

Got Ligotti?

I first encountered Thomas Ligotti in print decades ago, when my younger brother, who had been working at a local bookstore, presented me with a box of coverless paperbacks that had originally been destined for the incinerator.  One of the books included was Ligotti's Songs of a Dead Dreamer .  On a whim, in-between Eric Van Lustbader's Nicholas Linnear novels, I cracked it open.

And fell inside.

The stories within were bizarre, disturbing, and like nothing else I'd ever read.  There was a hint of a Lovecraftian style to them, but it appealed to more modern sensibilities.  There were times I had to put it down for a few days not just because what he'd written needed digesting, but because they were so damned creepy.  I can't describe them here in a way that gives these stories justice, so I highly recommend you go take a look.

This was in the early days of the internet, so there had been no way to learn more about Ligotti and his works, at least for the amount of effort that I had been prepared to expend at the time.  We had telnet that we used to MUD on, and a nascent web, but nothing like we have today.  Other books called, including college textbooks, so I moved on.

The coverless paperback managed to lose itself somewhere between Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Florida as a casualty of my peregrinations across the country, so while Ligotti's name drifted away from my active consciousness, the effects of his stories stayed with me.

An unfortunate reminder of him came in the form of this blog post on the awesome Lovecraft Ezine.  While it's great to read that his works have endured such that they've possibly been plagiarized, it's terrible that this has happened.  I haven't watched the show True Detective, and while I've heard good things about it, I probably won't watch it now.

As it turns out, Ligotti's not doing as well as one might hope, but he continues to write when he can, and that's good.  Now that I'm reminded of him, I've picked up his The Conspiracy Against the Human Race .  It doesn't promise to be light reading, which is exactly why I got it.

Read his stuff if you can find it, but be warned: you won't be the same afterward.

Charity: Having and Eating Your Cake

As part of the process of adopting a child in the United States, we had to attend parenting classes.  These classes taught things like dealing with an emotionally abused or traumatized child, parenting a child from a different culture from you, children with attachment disorder, and several other topics.

For the most part, it was a waste of time.  Much of what was taught wouldn't apply to our situation.  The agency we went through for our certification did most of their business through foreign adoptions of Ethiopian children.  In fact, we were their first domestic couple.

At the beginning of one class, while we were sitting around waiting for the state-mandated instructor to tell us that a common excuse for why African Americans don't adopt white babies is because they don't know how to take care of their hair, one adoptive parent said something extraordinary.  He said, "When I tell my friends that one of the reasons we want to adopt is because we want to do a good deed, they ask me why don't we just donate the money instead?"  The question had frustrated him, and he didn't have a good answer for it.

This is a picture of a cake I made in 2009 for illustration purposes.
The nature of the question is instructive in itself, and describes an extremely common mode of thinking: that the value of a good deed, of charity, is measured in large part by how "selfless" the deed is.  As if you're not supposed to get anything out of performing good works.

That's ludicrous.  It speaks of a mindset that values intentions over results.

There's no reason to think that one cannot do a good, even selfless act and still personally profit from it.  The two notions are not mutually exclusive.  Charitable acts don't have to be their own reward, including the adoption of a child.  One can fulfill the twin desires to become a parent and do a good deed simultaneously, without reservation.

A fed, loved, cared-for child is the result.  The intention is immaterial.

Contrast this, then, with confiscation of property by the government to achieve similar ends: this is not charity, nor is it virtuous.  When the fruits of your labor are taken from you to maintain social programs, it is not charity, because your choice to give has been taken from you at the point of a gun.  If you think this is extreme, try not paying your taxes for a while.  And talk to Wesley Snipes.

Ultimately, we live in a world of results.  Your intentions cannot be measured, nor should they be.  What matters is that you do give, not why.  Anyone seeking to determine the value of your charity by how little you personally gain from it is someone who would prefer to rely on state confiscation rather than good works to achieve virtuous ends.  In a free society, it simply doesn't work.

Breadhead Friday: The Agony and Ecstasy of Raisin Bread

My earliest memories of raisin bread involve tearing off the top crust to eat the icing and throwing out the rest of the slice.  My brothers did the same, so my dad stopped buying it.  It just wasn't very good.

This focaccia-style raisin bread from Peter Reinhart is the complete opposite of that.  It's extraordinary.  It's the apotheosis of raisin bread.  It's what raisin bread is supposed to be.

I won't duplicate his recipe here; you can get it from Artisan Breads Every Day or from his Craftsy class, which is worth purchasing if you want to learn how to make delicious bread and pizza at home.  The main difference between the savory focaccia recipe and the raisin bread recipe is that you have to use a little more water in the raisin bread dough to plump up the dried fruit.

For these loaves, I used a combination of dried cranberries, raisins, and dried cherries.

Dough ready for overnight rise
The recipe makes three 9-inch loaves (or discs) of raisin bread, and requires cake pans, parchment paper rounds, and a little oil to drizzle on top of the dough to help in shaping.  I used a combination of vegetable and canola oil.

Portioned, cold dough
The shaping in the pan consists of little more than dimpling it: evenly pressing it with your fingertips so that it fills the entire pan.  When it starts to resist, you leave it in a warm place to relax for several minutes.
After the first dimpling
After the third and final dimpling; ready for a rise
Then the loaves get baked in a hot oven for around 10-15 minutes, depending.  You don't need the pizza stone for this bread.
Baked and cooling - note the bubbles
For icing, I just whisked together confectioner's sugar and whole milk and drizzled it on the cooled loaves.  I like a stiff sort of icing, so I only put in a few drops of milk.  For a looser, more gooey icing, put in more milk.
Iced and ready to eat
You could add vanilla or almond extract to the icing if you wanted, or even put in some orange zest or Grand Marnier.  Or substitute coconut milk for the whole milk.  Experiment, go wild.  
The obligatory close-up
The sweetness of the icing works very well against the tartness of the dried fruit.  The texture is light, with a pleasant crunch and moistness.  Even if you don't like raisin bread, you'll like this.  

Adoption Stories: The Beginning

I wrote a piece for Clancy Tucker's blog on domestic adoption in the state of Colorado.  It outlines, in very broad strokes, the process of adopting a baby boy, like we did.


There's a great deal more to it, and as always, God is in the details.  (Or, depending on one's mood, the Devil is in the details.)  Future pieces will describe some of these experiences more specifically.

Unless you've done it, unless you've been there, it's not what you think.

Take a look at it on Clancy's blog.

Flash Fiction: The Decrepit Shed

It had been a relief to go outside, to get away from the endless talk about nothing that mattered.  She’d drained her phone’s battery on the long drive, and had spent the first hour of the visit kicking herself for leaving the charger on the kitchen counter at home.  The next hour had been taken up with answering the usual questions about school and summer in between bird-bites of a stale cheese sandwich.  Bored beyond belief and showing it, she’d asked after lunch if it was okay to take a walk by herself, halfway to the door before getting permission.

“Just steer clear of the shed,” warned her great-aunt as the screen door slammed shut.

The neighborhood’s banality was a perfect mirror of the family visit she’d sought to escape: quiet, familiar, and utterly uninteresting.  Every lawn had been mowed, every sidewalk swept, every curtain drawn on every window.  The center of town with its obligatory 7-11 was probably only a few blocks away, but she wasn’t sure which direction, and she’d left her bag at the house anyway.  Well, this was a bust.  She might as well go back and wait it out inside, where it was cooler.

Walking past her father’s Outback in the driveway, she remembered what aunt Rose had told her and stopped just short of the screen door.  What was in the shed to steer clear of?  Before she could talk herself out of it, she moved with quiet speed down the porch steps, along the side of the house, and around to the back yard.

The shed looked ancient, with peeling paint exposing the rotten wood beneath.  Below its only window were four discarded tires, and looming above the structure was a huge oak tree, strangely bare of leaves in the middle of summer.

It’s probably just full of cousin Jared’s old stuff, like car parts, she told herself.  He’d passed away when she was six years old, and her recollections of him were dim, at best.  It would be cruel to go through a dead relative’s things out of boredom.

Unless Aunt Rose was keeping something else in there.

The wind kicked up, lifting her hair and causing the bare oak’s branches to brush against the side of the shed.  She didn’t have to go inside to see what was in it.  All she had to do was step up onto the tires and peek through the rusted window screen.  What harm would there be in that?

A Small Collection of Conversations in the Car with My Three-Year-Old Son

Son: I'm gonna eat you all up like a hot dog, Daddy.
Me: No!
Son: Put ketchup and mustard on you.
Me: No, no!
Son: Num num num I'm eating you up!
Me: Oh God no, stop!
Son: Num num num num!  Urp.  All gone!
Me: I guess that's it, then.

~~~
Me: *peering out through the windshield at the rain* Nice day for the ducks, eh?
Son: Squirrels, too.
Me: Why the squirrels?
Son: They're nice and warm in the tree.
Me: What about the turtles?
Son: No.

~~~
Me: Are you gonna get tattoos when you grow up?
Son: Daddy, please sit on...ahhh...please sit on, uh...please sit on...ahhhh...please sit on...sit on MY lap. Please sit on MY little lap.
Me: Your lap's not big enough for me to sit on, buddy-roo.
Son: I have money in my pocket.
Me: Where did you get money? Can I have some?
Son: No.

~~~
Me: What did you have for your snack today?
Son: No me remember.
Me: Yes, you do!  It was an hour ago.  Can you tell me what you ate?  Was it cookies?
Son: Yes.  Cookies.
Me: You're just saying that because I said it.  Did you really have cookies?
Son: Uh-huh.
Me: What kind of cookies?  Did they have cheese on them?
Son: Uh-huh.
Me: And peanut butter?
Son: Uh-huh.
Me: And beans?
Son: Uh-huh.
Me: I think you're making that up.
Son: No me remember.