Le Printemps Commence

Oh, spring! Even if they're still being shipped out from California, I am in thrall to the thought of asparagus and strawberries and the tender little greens of spring. If I can wrangle a few people over for dinner, I'm going to try making asparagus risotto. Not something I usually make, but hey, what can happen?

Je ne veux pas travailler...

Food-world sighting at last night's Food & Wine Best Chefs 2005 event: Gastropoda's Regina Schrambling. Unlike most chipper bloggers (my cats! My hubbie! My cookies!) Schrambling hates everything. Most of all she hates her former employer, the New York Times. Boy, does she hate them. But she doesn't confine her bitterness to the NYT; no, she has a special little vial of vitriol for just about everyone. Her commentary on food-world idiocy can be a trainwreck of scorn and loathing, but she's not just bitchy for the fun of it (see Veiled Conceit for that); instead, she's truly outraged at the collapse of standards, journalistic, gastronomic, and otherwise, with the knowledge and experience to back it up. Still, she does make me think of that Roz Chast cartoon, where the teenager berates her befuddled parents, "Why you have to hate on everything all the time?" However, she was deep in conversation, and I was too intimidated to bust in and thank her for being so mean.

je ne veux pas dejeuner...

On our continuing quest for civilized late-lunches-with-wine in the neighborhood, B. and I ended up Cafe Quercy this afternoon. When we wander in around 1:45, two or three other tables are finishing up, including one older lady with the remains of a fabulous-looking roast chicken salad in front of her. We decide we'll both have what she's having, along with the day's special asparagus-dandelion soup. Then the waitress comes over, she's so sorry, but they're all out of roast chicken, and the next batch won't be ready for another 40 minutes or so. Well, we're suitably bummed. But I order the skate; B., repulsed by my description of it as "sort of soft and gelatinous" goes for the duck-confit salad. As we're waiting, B. spots a big platter coming out of the kitchen for the staff meal at the back of the restaurant. It's filled, nay, heaped, with roast chicken. And salad. Mais helas, pas pour nous.

But our lunch is surprisingly delicious anyway: smooth, buttery, grass-colored asparagus soup, with just a slight early-spring bitterness from the dandelion leaves, then lovely soft, succulent skate with capers and brown butter for me, plus haricots verts and all the cold beets off B.'s plate. For $10.95 each (the two-course prix fixe) a very good deal.

je veux seulement l'oublier

And playing in the background, accordions! Cafe Quercy, 242 Court St. at Baltic Street, Cobble Hill (718) 243-2151.

Et puis, je fume.

French Music for Spring (in honor of la belle Christina and her fabulous mix, Music to Drink Vin Chaud By)
1. High, Low, In (Paris Combo)
2. Je Ne Veux Pas Travailler (Pink Martini)
3. Folle de Toi (Benjamin Biolay)
4. Nuages (Django Reinhardt)

Songs for a Rainy Day

The snake told her things about the world…
He told her about the time there was a big typhoon on the island
And all the sharks came out of the water
Yes, they came out of the water and they walked right into your house with their big white teeth.
And the woman heard these things, and she was in love.
-Laurie Anderson, “Langue d’Amour”


Man says it’s raining, raining outside
I’ll be out there, in a little while
Cause you see, rain reminds me of you…
-Mazzy Star, “Give Me Your Lovin”


The rain is drumming down on the roof when I open my eyes the next morning. I can smell coffee, cigarette smoke, eggs cooking and something else that I can't put my finger on yet, wet Texas dust maybe. Carlene's standing in front of her hot plate, peering in a skillet like you'd look under the hood of your car when it's stalled out, 106 degrees in the shade and you're a hundred miles from anywhere.

I lie there, my eyes half closed, listening to the rain hitting the streets outside, a car cruising slow through the water, splashing up a wake like a ship. Carlene’s whistling Milkcow Blues as she sticks her head out the window to wash her face in the rain. “If you don’t believe I’m leaving, you can count the days I’m gone…” I pour a cup of coffee from the percolator and join her sitting on the rusty slats of the fire escape, my white T-shirt soaking through and my hair shiny like wet tar on the streets below. I pull it front of my eyes so I can look through it, a dripping beaded curtain. Carlene sits with her head tipped back, the rain running down the flat planes of her tanned face. "God, that feels good. Can't remember the last time it rained round here," says Carlene, without opening her eyes."How long you been here, in Texas?" I ask. All the time I was getting married, driving myself crazy over Billy Joe, watching Lucinda Mae and Candy Sue have babies, Carlene's been out god knows where, running all over the world while I was just setting back in that trailer.

Instead of answering, Carlene pulls me back inside, crooning Come back baby, I wanna play house with you. Come on baby , let's play house like we used to do. She sounds smoky and sexy, and more than a little like Elvis. "Never knew you were a fan of the King, I say as I duck through the window. Thought you called him Tennessee trash." "Didn't say he wasn't. But he sure as hell could sing, specially in the early days down in Memphis." Carlene keeps singing. "You may go to college, you may go to school, you may have a pink Cadillac but don't you be nobody's fool." I join in on the chorus "Now come back baby, come, come back baby, I wanna play house with you.” And I swear to myself, this is one ride I'm gonna ride to the end, no matter what crazy places it takes me, I'm gonna find the courage somewhere to ride it out, cause it's gonna be one strange and wild trip.

-from "Queen of Las Vegas"

Give that girl a cookie

Cookies, cookies, cookies. It's all about cookies these days. I just got an email from SF writer and fabulous MC Michelle Tea about her upcoming RADAR series at the SF Public Library. Amazing writers read their stuff, then they stick around for a panel discussion and Q & A afterwards. If you ask a question, you get a cookie, baked by the charming Tara Jepson, who's just about the cutest thing ever (and a really good writer in her own right). I caught a reading in February while I was soaking up the spring in SF, and it was great--and free! Although it was a little disconcerting to see all the usual queer-writer folks in bright light without cocktails to hand, since the series takes place on the lower floor of the Main Library, not in the bars where we're all used to getting our queer lit. Definitely go if you're in SF. Tues, March 29th, at 6pm, San Francisco Main Library (civic center). Readers: Jewel Gomez, Jamison Green, Amy Mahoney, and Truong Tran.

Also on the cookie front, Heather Gold continues her very funny one-woman (but lots of cookies) show "I look like an egg but I identify as a cookie" through April, with lots of cool special guests. More info on her website, Subvert.

And, not to be outdone on the right coast, Cheryl B continues her nifty Brooklyn reading series, Atomic (is anyone else seeing a space-age theme here?), with a collection of fab writers reading at Park Slope's Lucky 13 this Sunday, April 3rd. 7pm, Free. Readers: Janice Erlbaum, Sara Seinberg (an alum of the former Sister Spit reading series and cross-country tour, organized by the aformentioned Michelle Tea--see? It's all connected!) Elizabeth Whitney, and Steve Caratzas. Lucky 13 Saloon, 273 13th St at Fifth Ave, Park Slope, Brooklyn.

As for actual cookies, these are my homage to the Girl Scout Thin Mint--the best GS cookie ever. Don't think you can save yourself from eating the whole batch by freezing some; they taste just as good, if not better, frozen, especially if you use them to make ice-cream sandwiches. The original recipe comes from Mollie Katzen's Still Life with Menu, a book I use all the time, and not always just for this recipe. Really.

A couple of tips: Use good cocoa powder--I like Droste and Ghirardelli's in particular. Hershey's and Nestle's, while ubiquitous, taste like burnt sawdust to me. If you wanted to go super-minty, you could use mint-flavored chocolate chips instead of regular ones.

Double Chocolate-Mint Cookies

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) butter
1/2 cup (packed) brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp peppermint extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Cream butter and sugars. Beat in egg and extracts. In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients together. Stir flour mixture into butter, then add chips. Drop spoonfuls onto lightly greased cookie sheet, and bake 10-12 minutes.

Music for Baking Cookies (and commentary)
1. The Flood (The Soundtrack of Our Lives)
A kick-ass Swedish rock band who played an excellent, sweaty set at the Knitting Factory last night. This tune comes from their album Behind the Music, but they've also got a new one out, called Origin Vol.1.
2. La Canal (Radio Terifa)
Enticing gypsyish music, good for pretending you're Salome or one of those Fat Chance Bellydance girls. From their album Rhumba Argelina, on which I find about half the tracks really annoying and the rest completely enchanting. Recommended ages ago by my old squeeze Dutch, who counted it as good sex music.
3. Let My Love Open the Door (Pete Townsend)
I was searching for more TSOOL on Limewire and somehow this came up in my search. What a happy song.
4. Sinfonietta La Jolla (Bohuslav Martinu)
Thank you, WQXR. Lovely slightly jazz-influenced stuff from a Czech composer whom I'd never heard of until today.

A Bran Muffin That Doesn't Suck: IMBB 13

Today’s entry is in honor of the 13th Is My Blog Burning? event, in which a whole slew of food bloggers all submit entries on the same topic. This month, the theme is My Little Cupcake (or Muffin), and I’m taking the muffin route with this recipe for Buzzing Bran Muffins, adapted from my book Honey: from Flower to Table.

It wasn’t until I started researching recipes for this cookbook that I even contemplated the existence of a non-sucky bran muffin. Because really, most bran muffins totally blow. Could there be a muffin that was healthy without being a mouthful of sticks and leaves, moist but not oil-slicked, coffee-compatible but not achingly sweet? Muffins are lovely, but most cookbook (and café) versions are way too much like cake (all that butter! all that sugar!) for my tender morning sensibilities.

Using a recipe from New York City’s Cupcake Café cookbook as my starting point, I cut back on the oil, switched the molasses to honey, and generally tinkered around to get this final version. They taste a little like Boston brown bread or date-nut bread, and are delicious served warm with butter or cream cheese and apricot jam. The honey and buttermilk gives them a springy moistness that’s very pleasing, and they’re really good for you (lots of fiber and iron) without tasting at all didactic. Kids really like making (thanks to the goop factor) and eating these, especially if you make them in a mini-muffin pan lined with those cute little paper cups.

Alas, no photo, but take it from me, they're very, um, brown.

Buzzing Bran Muffins

First, grease a 12-cup muffin pan. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Get out three bowls—a big bowl, a medium-sized one, and a smallish one.

The goopy mix:
3/4 cup boiling water
1 cup wheat bran
1/4 cup dark, full-flavored honey or molasses
4 TB canola oil
1 cup raisins

In the big bowl, mix together and set aside for 5 minutes.

The dry mix:
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup wheat germ

In the medium bowl, sift or mix together well.

The wet mix:

2 eggs, beaten
1 cup buttermilk

In the smallish bowl (or a big glass measuring cup) beat together.

Now, stir dry mix into goopy mix. Stir briefly, then add wet mix. Stir together lightly until just mixed. Fill muffin cups and bake 25 minutes or until muffins spring back lightly when pressed with a fingertip. Let cool in pan 10 minutes, then serve or let cool on a rack. Makes 10-12 muffins.

Queen Esther

Spring, schming. Today was an absolutely raw, filthy day out there, a mixture of rain and sleet and snow, with the odd bit of hail thrown in for fun. With no umbrella and a not-warm-enough coat, I squished home from the subway in a thoroughly cranky mood. You know how you always check the packages on the mail table in the lobby, even when you’re not expecting anything, because hey, who knows? And today of all days, a box was waiting for me, a completely unexpected gift from my old pals Shifra and Stephen. Inside, with the kettle on and my sopping wet coat off, the box turned out to be a trove of Purim goodies, from those little crankable noisemakers to a plate of hamentaschen, dried apricots, pistachios, chocolates, and biscotti, plus a kitty-cat mask and a sheet of really bad jokes.

Purim is kind of a cross between halloween and carnival, celebrating the triumph of the Jewish Queen of Persia, Esther, over Haman, who was a very nasty piece of work. Every synagogue has a Purim carnival (spin art! throw the beanbag in Haman's mouth! goldfish raffles!), and during the reading of the Megillah, or the Book of Esther, noisemakers are cranked up at every mention of Haman's name, and there are costumes, masks, plays, and lots of general party action. In the Megillah, there's actually an injunction “to send gifts [manot] to one another,” especially food. And of course, the best Purim treat of all are hamantaschen, or Haman’s hats: triangular-shaped cookies with an apricot, prune, or poppyseed filling.

Unfortunately, most bakery hamentaschen are pretty sucky, using a thin, bland sugar-cookie dough and the barest scrape of rubbery fruit. My mother, however, used to make these cookies herself when my sisters and I were little, and hers were rich and lemony, with fat spoonfuls of real lekvar in the middles. Where regular jam would turn runny, leak, and burn during the baking process, the almost solid lekvars--made from poached and pureed dried fruit--stay put. Canned lekvars can be found in the kosher section of most supermarkets, but they're usually filled with preservatives and junky sweeteners. Luckily, homemade lekvars are delectable and easy to make, and the leftovers can be used like jam. For the best apricot filling, it's worth browsing around in a Middle Eastern grocery store to find cellophane-wrapped sheets of apricot paste, which resemble inch-thick rectangles of fruit leather.

So many thanks to Shifra and Stephen for brightening up a gloomy day, and this recipe is my manot to you.

Hamantaschen

2 sticks (1 cup) margarine or butter, or a mixture of the two
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 eggs
1/4 cup orange juice
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp grated lemon rind
4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Stir in OJ, vanilla, and rind. Fold in flour, baking powder, and salt. Divide into 3 disks. Wrap each disk tightly in plastic wrap and chill for several hours. (Otherwise dough will be too sticky to handle). Roll out each disk into a round approximately1/8 inch thick. Cut into 3 inch rounds and transfer rounds onto a parchment-covered baking sheet. Drop a teaspoon of filling onto the center of each round and fold sides into a triangle around filling. Bake at 350 degrees for 18-25 minutes, or until pale golden.

This recipe makes a lot, but if you don’t feel like baking a whole bunch of cookies at once, the dough and fillings can be kept in the fridge for up to two weeks, letting you bake off a small batch whenever you want.

It’s important to put the dough rounds onto the cookie sheet before filling; once filled, the cookies are rather fragile and tend to stick to the counter and tear, leaking filling, when you try to wedge a spatula under them to transfer. You’ll save yourself much heartache and gnashing of teeth by filling them directly on the sheet.

Apricot Filling

1 lb apricot paste
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup orange juice
2 TB orange zest
1 1/2 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup sugar

Tear apricot paste into small pieces. Mix all ingredients in saucepan. Toss and stir over low heat 10-15 minutes until softened and getting mushy. Let cool 5 minutes. Process to a puree. Taste and add sugar as necessary. This makes a lot!

Prune Filling

3/4 cup water or OJ
1/3 cup lemon juice
2 cups pitted prunes
1 cup raisins
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon

Mix all ingredients and stir over low heat until prunes are soft and plump. Keep under a boil, and watch that it doesn’t burn or stick to the pan. Cool 5 minutes, then puree. Taste for sugar and chill.

Pie Socialism

pie girl
Posted by: dixieday.

This photo was taken last September, at the First Annual Brooklyn Pie Social in Dumbo. Dozens of Brooklyn locals showed up with their homemade pies, which were sold to the eager public for a dollar a slice. Over $4000 was raised for nearby Brooklyn Bridge Park. I'm holding a plum tart, made with late-summer Italian prune plums. Because of the color, the tart disappeared quickly, while the more trad (and beige) apple pie took a while to move. Clearly, flash sells. The event was organized by the pie-lovin' folks from Bubby's Restaurant, who are coming out with their own pie cookbook later this year. I now own a very fabulous bright red t-shirt with a proud "Pie Socialist" logo on it, which coordinates very nicely with my gingham apron.

Springtime for Pie Queen

Well, happy spring, everyone. Crocuses were pushing up through the scruffy dirt in my neighbor's yard this morning, and the drugstores are filled with marshmallow Peeps in many colors insulting to nature.

Given the title of this blog, and my reputation as Food Girl (or Baking Chick), you, dear reader, may be wondering when I'm finally going to get around to talking about cooking, or when I'm going to get in the kitchen and bake a damn pie already.

So today's culinary adventure is lemon curd, made with the three Meyer lemons that I liberated from the tree next door to my old apt.in SF, during my recent trip back there. They've been sitting in the bottom of my fridge for the past month, earmarked for a jar of birthday lemon curd for my neighbor B.

Making lemon curd is a lot like making hollandaise sauce--a skill I acquired because my mother used to serve it with broccoli,asparagus and salmon all through my childhood. No one I know makes it anymore,but it's still divine, and since it's pretty much fat incarnate, you canserve it to those annoying carbphobes with a clear conscience. And once youhave the hollandaise thing down pat, you can whip up eggs Benedict without having to wait in line and pay $13.95 at your local overpriced brunch joint. Personally, not being a runny-egg-yolk person, I find eggs Benedict kind of disgusting, but for Christmas morning a few years ago, I did make the whole deal from scratch--poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, Canadian bacon (well, OK, actually that very handy fake soy Candian bacon) over toasted English muffins--and they were a big, big hit. Absolutely worth the time and butter on some lazy Sunday morning, especially if you've scored some nice wakeup sex beforehand.

But back to the lemon curd. Again, not my all-time fave thing, because of the gooey-egg aspect, but people who love it, really love it, especially B., who claims to have imbibed buckets of the stuff during his many ambles around the castles of Scotland. Supposedly, at one place, there's a little old lady who does nothing all day but make the shortbread and lemon curd for tea. I don't know why I feel competive about this, but I do.

There are lots of lemon curd recipes out there,but they're all slight variations on the same four-ingredient theme of lemons,butter, eggs, and sugar. The trick (as with hollandaise) is to cook the egg mixture very slowly over indirect heat (like a double boiler) so instead of sugary lemon-flavored scrambled eggs, you get a lush, smooth custard begging to be slathered on a scone or a piece of shortbread.

Monday morning I go to the greenmarket,which is sad and hunkered down in the rain, nothing for sale but cabbage and apples and plastic-wrapped muffins. The nice egg guy is there, though, with the little flip book of photos of his happy chickens running around and scratching in the dirt and grass, being all badass and cage-free. The egg guy at my friend Sharon's farmers' market doesn't sell his eggs in cartons; he just counts out the number of eggs you ask for and hands them to you in a paper bag stuffed with hay. Sharon puts her eggs and hay into a bowl in her fridge next to the raw milk and organic jam and homemade sasparilla and it looks like she lives on a farm in the 1940s, not in a cottage in Emeryville 10 minutes from a giant IKEA.

Back home in Brooklyn, I try to get in the mood for making lemon curd: I clean the little 12 x 12 square that counts as my kitchen counter; I wash the lemons;I get out my microplane zester and the fancy Straus organic butter. Back in my California days, I got to tour the Straus dairy, which is situated on a beautiful green chunk of peaceful Marin pasture and supports a herdof happy, grass-fed, organically-managed cows. In a time when more and more of Marin's dairy operations were shutting down, going organic and creating a niche product saved the Straus family farm. Their dairy products have always been wonderful, and now they've recently come out with a higher-butterfat, European-style butter. Yep, it's the butter you've been waiting for, now with more fat!

But this is not the day to take down the mythical little old Scottish lady. I stir and stir, and still I have a runny amber liquid instead of a nice creamy lemon-yellow mass. I add another egg yolk; I throw the whole mess into a heavy pot directly over the burner instead of in a double boiler. I cook and cook, and finally it begins to come together a little bit after almost an hour. The next morning, the chilled curd looks like leg wax and sticks to my teeth like gum. It actually tastes OK, but the texture is completely weird. Damn.

Luckily, there are still eggs left, and a couple more lemons and some butter. In my pajamas, coffee in one hand, I go for the big guns: Claudia Fleming's 6-egg version, from her fancy dessert cookbook The Last Course, one of those really restauranty books that gives recipes for things no one ever wants to eat at home, like rhubarb soup and licorice ice cream topped with pistachio-cardamom brittle. Still, she's very famous. Presumably she knows how to make decent lemon curd.

So,3 egg yolks, 3 whole eggs, beaten with 1/2 cup sugar and a pinch of salt,then mixed with a scant 1/2 cup of lemon juice (1 Meyer lemon, 1 regular lemon) and the zest of same. In a double boiler, it looks happy and crayon-yellowand thickens in exactly 10 minutes, just as the recipe says. Off heat, beat in 4 tablespoons of butter (you could use more, presumably), then strain it to get out any random bits of clotted egg. It doesn't make much--a little less than 2 smallish jars. But it's delicious, especially on a triangle of homemade shortbread, another excellent butter-delivery system. Beat 1 stickof butter until soft with 1/4 cup confectioner's (powdered) sugar and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. With a wooden spoon, mix in 1 cup flour and a couple generous pinches of salt until it forms a soft dough. Pat the dough into a flat roundon a sheet of parchment paper or buttered foil. Poke the round all over with a fork, and press the tines of the fork down all around the edges of the round, as if you're marking a pie crust. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, until lightly golden. Cut into triangles while warm.

Music for Baking:
1. Five Variations on Dives and Lazarus (Ralph Vaughn Williams)
2. I'm Old Fashioned (Ella Fitzgerald)
3. Gettin' Dirty Just Shakin' That Thing (Romeo Nelson)
4. Put A Lid On It (Squirrel Nut Zippers)
5. Can't You Hear Me Calling (Country Gentlemen)

P.S. Ok, extra points and a jar of homemade jam to anyone who can identify the South Park quote embedded in the above, especially if you can tell me who said it, and why.

I'm the Man Who Loves You

My most recent job was in the Office of the Living Dead, populated almost exclusively by iPod-zombie hipsters. No one talked; everyone was plugged into their headphones and hunched over their computers, and if you had to ask a question you'd tap someone on the shoulder and they'd jump a mile and scream at the shock of actual human contact. The only fun part was jacking into iTunes and spying into all these too-cool-for-school types' playlists. I love prowling through other people's music; it's like looking at their underwear, equally revealing, intriguing and embarassing all at once, because you know that the stuff on their computer is the real deal--what they're actually listening to, not the carefully edited collection of CDs in the living room. Not surprisingly, everyone had OutKast and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Franz Ferdinand and the Strokes. But who would have guessed that Mr dyed-black-hair Williamsburg Tech Guy was a secret Beatles fan? Or that everything from Belle and Sebastian's ode to adolescent boys making out at boarding school ("Seeing Other People"--my interpretation, anyway) to Rufus Wainwright's neo cabaret and the chiming prettiness of the Magnetic Field's first album (including the immortal line, "I have a mandolin/I play it all night long/it makes me want to kill myself") would work its way through my cheap little headphones? Probably no one got anything too cool off of my list,unless they were really into Prokofiev, Ralph Vaughn Williams or Loretta Lynn's rough-edged hookup with Jack White, but since I barely got paid enough to eat, I figured it was well worth my time to beef up my music knowledge.

Right now, thanks to some unknown co-worker,and probably to the deep chagrin of my neighbors, I'm listening constantly to Wilco's "I'm the Man Who Loves You" off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (which, I'll admit, I wanted to love purely for the album title alone). It's a brilliant song, all slashy and messy around the edges, and country-swing-soul in the center, with really simple lyrics like "if I could you know I would/ just hold your hand and you'd understand/I'm the man who loves you." What more do you need? Well, that would be Neko Case and her band all swinging through a happy gospel tune, "This Little Light of Mine" for a live audience in Toronto, just before she tells them that we should save the tigers by feeding them all the world's spare children, because "tigers are sleek, and noble, and children are loud and messy." Plus, I think I just love the title. Much as I love being courted (theoretically speaking, at least at the moment), of late I'd just like to be the guy: forthright and ready to make the moves.

Another favorite--this one picked up at one of last summer's solitary nights at the Sunshine Cinema, over on Houston--is a gift for Mahler fans and German-minded depressives everywhere: Janet Baker singing "Ich Bin Der Weit Abhanden Gekommen," which translates to something like "I have lost touch with the world." It's the slow, dark, ethereal song playing in the background during the very Beckettian exchange between the two old, old avant-garde theater guys at the end of Jim Jarmusch's film Coffee and Cigarettes.

The Pie Queen's O.P.P* Song List
1. I'm the Man Who Loves You (Wilco)
2. I Got a Man (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
3. 10,000 Fireflies (Magnetic Fields)
4. Seeing Other People (Belle and Sebastian)
5. California (Rufus Wainwright)
6. Lord, Send Me an Angel (White Stripes)
7. Keeping the Customer Satisfied (Simon and Garfunkel)

*other people's playlists

Welcome!

Hello! Welcome to Adventures of the Pie Queen, the story of a woman, her kitchen in Brooklyn, and a whole lot of pies. More to follow on this snowy day in March....