Orange Ginger Shortbread Cookies

The days are slowly creeping longer and I’m tired by seven. I’m working harder, longer hours. I drove something like 450 miles this weekend, and I’m glad I spent the money on toll roads, parking garages, bottles of wine, and cups of coffee. I’m making my own memories now. I’m paying off bills. I ate bologna sandwiches with my parents the night I came home and we sat and talked for an hour. My dad, with the TV turned loud, and my mom, with her wool socks and iPad on her lap. She checks for deals online and he checks the death toll in a five-car pile-up outside of Pittsburgh.

I don’t fear I’ll be here forever, but I’m taking my time here while I can. I made them cookies before I left, the smallest gesture to say thank you that I could muster. They’re orange and ginger shortbreads. The whole batch was gone by Monday. They were made with love and only the crumbs remain on the cellophane, now crumbled up in the trashbin by the sink.

Orange Ginger Shortbread Cookies

Yields 12-14 cookies, depending on shapes used

Ingredients:

• 1 ¾ cup flour
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• ½ cup white sugar, plus more for sprinkling
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 ½ tablespoon orange zest, plus more for sprinkling
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• 1 tablespoon orange juice

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or oil to prepare
2. In a medium bowl, sift flour and salt together
3. Mix butter and sugar in stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, until it is well incorporated but still pretty firm
4. Add vanilla, orange zest, ginger, and juice
5. With mixer on a low speed (or, if you prefer to use a wooden spoon, that is perfectly fine), add flour mixture until dough begins to come together
6. It will be fairly dry but should hold its shape
7. Dump onto a floured work surface and pat into a disc
8. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes in refrigerator
9. Roll out onto a dusted work surface and cut into shapes that are about 1/3 inch in thickness
10. Sprinkle with sugar and orange zest
11. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until brown and crisp around the edges

Home + Cake

I live just west of two creeks now, just shy of the intersection between Dunnings Creek and Bob’s Creek. In a house too big for us. In a town I used to think was too small for me. There’s a store here run by a Mennonite family. They’ll sing to you if you buy bread in the morning. Hymns about salvation, the ascension, peace on earth. I just wanted a loaf of rye.

I’m tempted to start smoking again, to fiddle with a cigarette between my lips. Breaking promises I never thought I could keep. I’m busy now, watching the houses turn from wood to vinyl to brick on my drive to the gas station. I see a horse swat aimlessly at flies with its long, shaggy tail. I look a little closer and see it’s matted in horse shit. I get angry and then get over it. I keep driving, still craving a cigarette.

I don’t buy a pack, though. Not yet at least. I think of an uncle my mother had. She called him Old Relic. He was ancient and his nails were bitten to the quick; he left small drops of blood on napkins when he’d twist them too tight in his hands. His voice wheezed and grated, his windpipe as fragile as china. At night I’d hear him snoring from the hallway, his breathing a constant moan, a motel air conditioner that’s only half-assing it.

I didn’t buy a pack and I turned around. The filthy horse didn’t even move an inch. I go back to a home that I craved for years while I lived in California. A home where the chipped paint of the back deck breaks off in large strips. The paint was called terra cotta when my mom bought it. It’s hardly blushing anymore.

It’s a home where six cats live and two dogs. Three Midwesterners still sometimes feel out of place in rural Pennsylvania, too. Cats that step in my mother’s Gold Bond powder dusting the bathroom floor. Small footprints and nothing but whispered running on the floorboards while I’m upstairs working. Cats with sleepy, glaucoma eyes that stare and blink and still trust me in their fog. A bucket of screws fell when the wind swung the door open too fast. The bath sometimes takes a half hour to drain completely.

This is the world I live in now, not the one of wanting and remembering. I see it for its beauty now, the uneasiness and the imperfections that lie just beyond the quick when I bite the nail too low, when I drive too fast on the windy roads. When I think of Old Relic and the cats that can’t see and the horse that seems to have given up on life. It’s all beautiful in its own way, because I’m letting life happen around me these days.

Orange Marmalade Cake with Tahini Frosting

Makes two 6-inch cakes

Ingredients for the cake:

• 2 cups AP flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoons baking soda
• ½ tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 cup whole milk
• ½ cup orange marmalade
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• Zest of half an orange
• 2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 3 tablespoons shortening, room temperature
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs

Directions for cake:

1. Prep two six-inch pans with butter and parchment paper
2. Preheat oven to 350*F
3. In a medium-sized bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside
4. In a separate bowl or measuring cup, whisk together vinegar, milk, marmalade, vanilla, and orange zest. Set aside.
5. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, beat fats and sugar on medium-high until light and ribbons form
6. Add eggs, one at a time
7. With mixer on low, alternate between adding the flour mixture and the milk mixture in thirds. When both are mixed in, turn mixer off and scrape bowl with rubber spatula to ensure batter is fully incorporated
8. Divide batter between prepared pans
9. Bake for 34-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Check at 30 minutes for excessive browning on top, due to the sugar content in this recipe (with the marmalade). If so, tent foil on tops of cakes
10. Allow to cool before icing cake

Ingredients for Tahini frosting:

• ½ cup tahini
• 2 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 2-4 tablespoons whole milk

Directions for tahini frosting:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment, beat tahini and sugar together. If dry and crumbly, add a thin stream of milk until you yield your desired consistency

Does the farm house creak in memory of me?

My mother called me this morning to talk on her drive. She told me how the leaves are all dead now, how it was a hassle to rake them when it was inevitable they'd be covered in snow in a month. How she spilled her iced tea on her favorite scarf, so she wrapped an old t-shirt around her neck on the way home to keep warm. She said her body was like her home in Pennsylvania, filled with too many memories and creaking with each step.

I think they plan on moving soon; I think she’s telling me in her own way. I think they’ll sell the house I grew up in soon. She’s got arthritis in her collarbone, it hurts to hold the hand rail some days to get up the steps. My mother is barely fifty, but she’s full of memories and a lifetime of hard work makes her creak with every step. I won’t grieve the loss just yet, but I keep thinking about what she said this morning and the pause in conversation that was filled with my million questions of her future and my past, so intrinsically tied to that old farm house.

I’m surprised it’s still standing, the way the water floods the basement in the spring. It’s sits at a base of a hill called Friendship and water ran through our front door one April. I’m surprised it’s still standing, it seems like a thousand years went by since I’ve been home. Has the pool water turned that murky shade of green? Has the grapevine strangled the chickenwire fence that covers half the yard? How many bottles washed up from the creekbed? How many cigarette butts are still hidden underneath a rock I used to smoke next to in the backyard?

How many years did I say I’d run away and never look back?

Home is every dandelion and birthday candle I blew out with one heavy sigh. It’s hard to see it straight-on, but it’s in the periphery of my comparisons. Pittsburgh and Italy, San Diego and Texas—I’ve been building homes from cardboard boxes, never getting the details of that old house in Pennsylvania replicated until it felt right.

How the rosebush blushed in the spring and by summer was shaking with aphids. How the floorboard creaked until it became a Hail Mary you’d say before you snuck out at night. How we never locked the door and kept the windows open until January. How the snow melted once and we found the skeleton of a chicken that must have escaped the coop. How my mother left bologna on the porch swing for stray cats to eat and they found a couple of baby skunks one morning too. How it all seemed to clear to me that I wasn’t a part of that world the last time I was there; how it all felt too pure and corruptible.

And I still keep my mother at a 3,000 mile distance for this same reason. She’s quiet until the snow melts.  She blushes until you get too close. She creaks and says her prayers at night.  She’s so pure in her own way, but there’s chickenwire on her soul and she won’t stay that way for long. I keep my distance, so I won’t grieve the loss just yet.

Chocolate Pumpkin Bundt Cake with Spiced Orange Icing

A cake you make when you need to feel a sense of home, whether that home is 3,000 miles away or from 7 years ago. Makes one bundt cake.

Ingredients for Cake:

• 2 1/2 cup AP flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, dark
• 1/3 cup + 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 6 tablespoon butter, extremely soft
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
• 2 cups milk

Directions for Cake:

1. Heavily butter, grease, and flour a bundt pan and preheat oven to 350*F
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, sift together flour, soda, salt, cinnamon, cocoa powder, and sugars. Repeat. 
3. In a separate bowl or measuring cup, whisk all remaining ingredients until well blended and egg yolk is broken up.
4. Create a well in the dry ingredients and add a small amount of the wet ingredients (about 1/2 a cup) into the dry ingredients, turn mixer on low
5. Continue to pour remaining wet ingredients in slowly, turning mixer off a couple times to scrape bottom with a rubber spatula
6. When it is all mixed together, turn stand mixer on medium-high and blend for one and a half minutes
7. Give one last mix with the rubber spatula and pour into the prepared pan
8. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes, checking at the fifty minute mark for a cake where a toothpick inserted comes out clean
9. Allow to cool before taking out of pan and icing.

Ingredients for Spiced Orange Icing:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 tablespoon light corn syrup
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• 2 tablespoon orange juice
• 1/2 tablespoon orange zest
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• Pinch of black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 4-5 cups confectioner's sugar
• Pinch of salt

Directions for Icing:

1. Sift together confectioner's sugar and all spices in a separate bowl and set to the side
2. In a small sauce pan, heat sugar, butter and corn syrup on medium-high, stirring occasionally to avoid burning
3. Allow butter to melt completely into mixture and cook for a minute or two until sides start bubbling slightly
4. Add milk and orange juice, stirring once. Allow to cook for an additional minute
5. Take off burner and allow to cool completely 
6. Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment
7. When cool to the touch, begin beating on medium-high and adding confectioner's sugar one cup at a time, allowing for each cup to be mixed in fully before adding the next
8. Continue to do this until you yield your desired consistency with the icing (may use more or less of the confectioner's sugar).  Icing should be pale and spotted with orange and spices
9. Spread desired amount over cooled bundt cake
10. Fully iced cake can be stored for up to four days in fridge

Back Home.

In three days I packed up my life in San Antonio and moved back in with Nolan in California.  The West Coast has some magnetic pull on me, the way water always run down to the deepest crack in the tile.  The way the black mould builds around it, the deep doubts that went into my decision to ever leave my home in San Diego.  

In three days, we tore down the home I had built for myself, broke book shelves into splinters.  Unhooked pictures I had hung to hide holes I had punched into the wall.  I lost a set of keys and found them in an old shoe.  I tucked my passport in a folder with pictures of my mother.  Things I valued made their way into suit cases, things I could replace found their way into trash bags that were advertised to hold 40 gallons of dead grass, debris, springtime detritus.  Everything I owned could fit in my Nissan and we stopped by coffeeshops to say goodbye to the friends I had made.  We promised to be different in our return, I'm holding onto that promise.

I am iron-fisted and yellow-bellied.  I didn't want to make it on my own anymore.  I didn't want to have my pride in the way of a life shared with someone.  The bravest thing to do is to love someone, the hardest thing I've ever done was drop Nolan off at the airport and wave goodbye, smiling.  In three days, I quit my job and left the Hill Country I tried so hard to romanticize.  I'll miss the white-walled sanctuary of a creative space to call my own.  I'll miss the train that screamed its presence like a mockingbird.  I'll miss the way the asphalt smelled in the post-rain break in the humidity.  I'll miss a lot of things, but I'm a different person now.

I'm older now.  Six months can do that to a person.  

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We left when we wanted to and hit El Paso by dusk.  We chased elements along the way.  We hit fog in some mountain range that I couldn't tell you the name of.  Everything I had and loved was in that car, I didn't want to lose it all to the fog and my lack of depth perception.  In the gossamer veil that covered the mountaintops.  Deadly, smokey.  Miscarried clouds that threatened me, I woke up Nolan from his nap and had him drive through it.  He was confident, comfortable.  I know I can't do some things on my own, and that solidified why I made the decision to go back.  His calming presence, his reliability.  His ability to save me when I'm white-knuckled and shaggy-breathed.

We chased the rain, too.  Big puddles.  Giant puddles.  We hit them on the way to his sister's house.  We saw Las Cruces in the distance and passed signs that advertised authentic Native American goods.  We saw Las Cruces in the distance, we took an exit that advertised a new Wendy's opening.

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The two days' drive out to California was punctuated like that.  Element diverting.  Pointing to distant towns, they had words like Halcyon and Sunshine in their names.  They promised things, artifacts of the manifest destiny that led the founders on their journey.  They had probably never felt a sun so hot.  It all felt like hell sooner or later and a lot less like paradise.  And up close in those small roadside towns, we saw boarded up windows, dogs on chains, billboards to buy 2,000 acres of land for $13,000.  We stopped at a gas station where the coffee pot had been on so long the remaining brew was scorched and sticking to the pot.  We stopped at another where the bathroom was to the side of the building and didn't have any soap.  We got some spiced gum drops, the kind our grandmothers used to eat, and some cold ginger ale and left soon after in a dust cloud.  We continued on out west and never shook anyone's hand along the way.

The car rides were silent sometimes, we held hands sometimes.  Milo came along, too.  We took turns holding him, we took turns napping.  We took turns paying for gas or food or the odd scratch-off to break up the monotony of one road and a thousand miles ahead of us.  We didn't eat well those few days, we slept even less.  We never talked about the future, because the future was right in front of us on the I-10, merged with us onto the I-8.  And when I could taste salt in my mouth, I didn't know if it was from tears, sweat, or my imagination running wild at the thought of the ocean.  

The desert can play tricks on you sometimes like that, but I beat the coyote at his own game.  I left Texas, left the desert, left the southwest altogether.  You can find me in San Diego now, at coffeeshops and Chinese restaurants, having the life I was supposed to when I moved into this house for the first time a year ago.

Homemade Ginger Ale and Spiced Orange Peel Candies

Inspired by our road trip snack choices, a refreshing ginger ale and spiced orange peels.  Pair with a scratch-off and you're all set for your next road trip.

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For the Ginger Ale

Ingredients: 

• 1 piece ginger, 6-8 inches by 2-4 inches (hard t gauge, but the more you put in, the more gingery it will taste), peeled* and cut into small rounds a quarter-inch thick
• 3 1/2 cups water
• 2 cups sugar
• Pinch of salt
• Squeeze of orange slice
• 1 liter tonic water (pref. Schweppes) 

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, combine water and sugar.  Over medium-high heat stir until sugar is dissolved. 
2. Add ginger slices and bring mixture to a boil
3. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 5-7 minutes.  Watch so sugar does not caramelize.
4. Turn heat off.  Mixture should be syrupy and fragrant.  Add a pinch of salt squirt of orange juice.
5. Put lid on saucepan and allow to steep for 30 minutes to 1 hour
6. To assemble drink:  
   1. For an individual drink:  Pour ginger syrup in a glass about a quarter way full, top with tonic water, then with ice
   2. For a whole bottle:  Use a decanter (for immediate use) or a hermetic bottle for later use (recommend within half an hour).  Add all of the syrup and top with tonic water slowly with a funnel. Chill in refrigerator. Enjoy with the spiced orange peels.

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Spiced Orange Peels

Ingredients:

• Peel of one orange, cut into strips
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger powder
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/8 teaspoon cumin
• pinch of black pepper

Directions:

1. In a pot of boiling water, simmer orange peel strips for 15 minutes.  Drain water and rinse with cold water.  Rinse again. Set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine water and sugar and heat on medium-high until sugar is dissolved and begins to boil (watch again carefully for caramelization).
3. Lower heat to medium-low and add peels and simmer for 15-20 minutes until tender and gummy.
4. Put on a baking sheet with a paper towel underneath to drain some of excess syrup off.
5. While peels drain, mix remaining ingredients on a shallow plate with a fork.  Lay down parchment paper.
6. Dip peels in sugar mixture with fork or fingers and dip on both sides.  Lay on parchment paper to dry 8-12 hours or until dried.