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election day diary

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7:30am First pot of coffee of the day brewed! We are checking out the morning TV news, for the first time in memory, to see how long the lines are in Virginia. Not too long, and we catch one really happy looking black guy about our age coming out of the polls and waving to the news cameras. It’s on!

8:30am I go over to our polling place to check out the length of the line (still inside the building) and to talk to the folks in charge about bringing over some coffee for the voters. I get the all clear and come back home to make it in a pot I borrowed from the Women’s Club, with a little help from the interwebs.

9:30am The coffee finally finishes percolating and I take it over to the school with some cups. The line is small now, just inside the main room. Realizing that I don’t have anything to offer folks with this coffee, I head to the grocery store, to pick up some fake creamer, sugar packets, and more cups.

10:30am When I get back to the school — with day old donuts in tow! — the line is again stretching outside. I am heartened to see that the Obama volunteers are still outside: if they are at our polling place in Prince George’s County, Maryland, they are truly everywhere. Once inside, I relocate the coffee station to the hallway from right beside where you check in, figuring there would be more takers farther back in the line. Former mayor and current Town Council member Margaret Mallino happened to be in line just then, and graciously agreed to pose for a shot near my new coffee station.

11am Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m finally mixing up the cookie dough I didn’t get to last night. It’ll go into the fridge to chill while I shower (!) and then into the oven and it’s off to Virginia for the afternoon. Somewhere in there a lunch consisting of something other than day old donuts will get consumed. Depending on demand, I may perk another pot of coffee at the school for the post-lunch crowd before heading out.

1:30pm A guy I went to junior high with, who now lives in Florida and I’ll refer to as Rainbow941, sent me his analysis while I was in the kitchen making Pumpkin Cookies For Obama: “This is the classic mismatch. Horrible economy, stagnant war bleeding the country dry, old out of touch candidate versus the new, free- thinking, idiologically super hot liberal. GAME OVER.” With which I tend to agree; a similar analysis led me to observe to my partner last week that I could ‘totally see’ why voters elected FDR over and over and over until he died. Which reminds me to share with you where the voting populous was with regard to this very matchup two years ago (no wonder McCain always looked like a pole was jammed somewhere unpleasant during joint appearances). I will feel sorry for the old dude and his dramatic decline at exactly 1:59am this evening, or whenever we get the Alaska results, whichever comes later.

2:30pm It’s now raining, lightly but steadily, and is predicted to keep doing so all night. I am heading to Virginia for the next few hours, to do whatever I can to support the voters and Obama volunteers. Here’s what you can do for me (and Barack Obama!) while I’m gone: (1) Live somewhere warm? (Arizona, Florida, New Mexico!) Buy a 24 pack of water bottles at your local store and drive it to your local polling place; (2) Live somewhere cold? (Colorado, Montana, Pennsylvania!) Buy a gallon of coffee at your local Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks and drive it to your local polling place; (3) Live somewhere rainy? (Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina!) Buy a few cheap umbrellas and drop them off at your local polling place; (4) Got more time than money? Stop by your local GOTV office and help them with whatever they’re doing; (5) Got more free minutes than time or money? Call voters from your own phone; and (6) Do all of this in the evening after work! Lines are going to be long well after the polls close, and poll workers — your neighbors who will have all been there since an hour before the polls opened this morning — and voters alike will thank you.

3:15pm Traffic is slow as I approach ‘that damn drawbridge,’ however it’s mostly going the other way out of the city, which makes me hopeful that people are rushing home to make sure to be able to vote. Once I get to Englin’s house, I make phone calls for about half an hour. I really hate making phone calls, by the way, but that’s what there is to do, so I do it. The local effort is so under control, though, that the calls are to Virginia Beach, in support of Glenn Nye‘s congressional race. As part of the organizing efforts extraordinaire, folks have canvassed the neighborhood twice already by 4:30pm to determine who’s voted. There are a few people left who they haven’t caught, so I head out for another loop of the surrounding blocks to knock on doors as ask if folks have voted. They have or they aren’t home or, in the case of two guys I catch on their porch, they’re on their way to do so right now.

5pm I am getting concerned about getting back to Maryland, and I want to stop at the polls themselves with the snacks I’ve brought. I was hoping for mobs of people after work, so that I could get some good pictures. Apparently I needed to be in Virginia at 6am to get those shots; by 5pm everything is moving along quickly. The Obama volunteers and Election Protection folks are still there, though, so I stop at two local schools and offer up cookies on my way back out of town.

6:30pm Once home, we head right over to the elementary school so that my partner can vote. Someone has very kindly cleaned up the coffeepot that I left there earlier in the day, and I pass around the remaining cookies to my local poll workers and get my photo taken by the local AP guy. The afternoon has been really slow (thus the opportunity to clean up the coffeepot) and everyone’s looking like they’ll be very glad to see the other side of 8pm. We also ran into our new neighbor, who’d been doing Election Protection down in southern Virginia all day. She tells us that she got stuck behind the Obama motorcade on the road last night and went all day on only three hours of sleep, and therefore declines our offer to hang out at our place and drink until the wee hours.

7:30pm Here we are back in our house, TV on, websites loaded, minimal precincts reporting as of yet. Expected first toast: Kay Hagan! In the meantime, I will be glued to the Indiana Secretary of State site. And, the returns blogging will continue in a new post.

election day diary

GOTV for Obama in Alexandria, VA

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Door hanger hung by the pumpkin for change!


The scene where I picked up my marching orders.

Today I spent a couple of hours hoofing it around Alexandria, leaving hangers on doors. Today’s hangers were all about letting people know where their polling place will be and what to do in the event that you’re not on the rolls when you show up to vote. By pure happenstance, I was dispatched to work out of the house of a Virginia State Delegate, David Englin. Having learned the route there and home, I’ll likely return to the same spot for tomorrow’s late-afternoon and evening poll support work. For which I will be baking cookies, brewing coffee, loading up the car with chairs and umbrellas, and just generally preparing to be cheerful.

I can’t remember being so excited about an election since we were the Clinton youth vote. It’s funny to look back and see how increased youth turnout (and Ross Perot) were credited with handing Clinton that win, and how later elections just didn’t measure up. We’re hearing all the same rhetoric about young people voting and seeing all kinds of evidence of increased campaign participation. At the same time, I spoke just this weekend with a woman who was part of the youth vote for Truman, and volunteered as a poll watcher in Philadelphia while in college. I expect that the first time you vote for president is the time that defines you, but we of Clinton youth vote have been stepping up and doing our part in this cycle as well. I’d hazard a guess that a lot of the folks I’m seeing out volunteering were Kennedy youth voters in their time, too.

Maybe after tomorrow, though, we’ll all just be part of the Obama vote. It’s not often that you get a chance to be involved in something you’ve waited your whole life for, and that’s exciting. I, for one, was confident I’d live to see the day the U.S. elected a black president. I just didn’t expect to be this young.

GOTV for Obama in Alexandria, VA

food : Italian almond tart

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For the first time this year I attended my alma mater’s annual local potluck dinner. I signed up to bring a dessert, as I’m always glad to have an opportunity to make a pie or tart when there are others available to eat most of it! This time I chose to make an Italian Almond Tart, a recipe I’ve made a few times before and was confident in. Also, I’d picked up some homemade blackberry jam from the folks at Harris Orchards, and I was eager to put it to good use.

The nice thing about this tart is that it’s quite easy to make, but guests assume it was complicated because it looks so professional when it’s done. I highly recommend it for when you want to impress people! The trickiest aspect of the recipe is making the tart shell dough. As with all pie crusts, the tricks are to (1) use very cold butter, preferably some that’s been kept in the freezer; (2) use very cold water, preferably some that’s been chilled in the freezer; (3) handle the dough as little as possible, for which I recommend making it in a food processor; and (4) chill it thoroughly before rolling it out and again before it goes in the oven, which will both help you add as little extra flour as possible in the rolling and keep it nice and flaky. The dough recipe for this tart is quite sticky, with the egg yolk and vanilla, so judicious chilling helps a lot.

The tart shell is prepared by half baking it, which means you line it with tinfoil, weight the bottom with rice or dry beans or little ceramic beads, and then cook it at 375F for 20 to 30 minutes, until the crust is golden and the dough is no longer wet. Once the tart shell is rolled out and baking, the rest couldn’t be easier.

Step 1: mis en place.

Sugar, flour, butter, eggs, almond paste.

Step 2: cream the butter, beat in almond paste chunks [note: almond paste is not the same as marzipan, the ratio of almonds to sugar is higher], beat in eggs, mix in sugar and flour.

Nice and smooth.

Step 3: when the tart shell is done — this one actually could have used another 5 to 10 minutes, as it’s still a little wet — spread the jam in the bottom.

Blackberry jam ready to go.

Your shell will then look like this:

Having the shell a bit warm will help spread the jam.

Step 4: spoon the filling evenly into the shell, trying not to push the jam too far up on the sides; pushing out from the middle will cause a lot of overflow.

Work quickly to keep the filling from melting too much.

Step 5: sprinkle the almonds on top and bake.

Nice and even.

Step 6: bake at 350F 30 to 40 minutes, then let it cool on a rack overnight to firm up, then slide it onto a plate and chill in the fridge or serve; this one could have again been baked about 5 minutes longer, but I was on my way out the door to something else so I didn’t make time for that.

The tart will have risen and will collapse a bit as it cools.

Finally, enjoy! Do I need to say that there were no leftovers?

food : Italian almond tart

food : canning applesauce

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Applesauce!

In order to preserve for future use the 30 pounds of apples acquired on our first apple-picking expedition, I chose to make applesauce. As with the apple pie filling, I used a mix of Stayman, Braeburn, and Empire. I used a recipe that called for 1.5 pounds of apples, 1 tbsp. of lemon juice, and 2 tbsp. of sugar per pint. I used about 1/3 cup of sugar for the whole batch, and mashed the cooked apples with a potato masher until uniformly chunky. Then 25 minutes in the hot water bath and I was done. The result was a bit tart, but very tasty. We’ve eaten two of the seven pints already!

We’re planning another trip to the farm, and I’m thinking I’ll make some applesauce mixes the next time. Maybe rhubarb (I have a lot of that diced in the freezer) or cranberry. I can’t find a cranberry applesauce recipe I like, but I’m thinking of just adding a cup of fresh cranberries to the whole batch and seeing how that works out. I’m also considering making apple chutney or something along those lines. We’ll see how many apples I end up needing to make something with. Regardless, the pints and half-pints are much easier to process, and I think I’ll stick with that size until I get a more authentic canning setup (I’m currently using a stockpot and a steamer tray).

food : canning applesauce

apple harvest

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Apples!


All the best ones are out of reach.

Last weekend we drove up to Larriland Farm in Howard County to pick apples. I remember picking apples as a kid, but it wasn’t something we did every year. What I don’t remember is what we did with all the apples we brought home! We discovered this year that it’s easy to fill up on apples quickly when each of you have a bag that holds 15 to 20 pounds and there are rows and rows of trees before you. In retrospect, it’s hard to believe that I was nervous there wouldn’t be enough: we could have filled our entire car and not made a noticeable dent in the orchard’s bounty. We also brought home beets, spinach, and more pie pumpkins, again taking only the smallest portion of what they had available.

After much deliberation we decided to pick only two of the three varieties available, Stayman and Braeburn (my two favorite kinds, which weighed heavily in the decision-making process). I like tart crisp apples, which I’ve learned are typically late-season apples. My partner eats apples with his lunch, sometimes two or three per day during local apple season. The smaller and slightly more sweet Braeburn were designated for that purpose, leaving me with about 15 pounds of Stayman apples to use as I wished. After making a couple of the requisite pies — my usual contribution to dinners where we’re the guests — I decided to put some of them up in jars for use later in the winter. To round out the firm apples with some that would mush up — that’s a technical term — when cooked, I picked up some Empire from my regular farmers’ market suppliers, the folks at Harris Orchard.

In an effort to use some of the interesting quart jars I received this summer — some of which are nearly antiques as they’d been collected from estate sales over the years — I started with pie filling. Not only have I never canned pie filling before, I’ve never made a pie from canned filling, so this was a new experience all around. I found a recipe online, cleaned and sterilized the jars, and started processing the apples using the handy peeler-corer-slicer I bought with our one of our last lingering wedding gift cards. (As an aside, I have been happily using all of the kitchen items we’ve received as gifts; having the proper tools and large enough bowls makes cooking all of our meals every day so much more enjoyable!) Of course, things didn’t go entirely smoothly: I didn’t peel enough apples initially, and had to conscript my partner to do that while I kept the sauce from scorching and the quart jars were a tight squeeze in my stockpot, as I have a bit of a rigged up water-bath setup. Everything seems to have turned out fine, though. Only one of the jars didn’t seal, so I stuck it in the fridge to be the test pie in a couple of weeks. I’m considering giving the pie filling as gifts to a couple of people (shh, don’t tell!) and want to be sure that it makes a decent pie before doing so.

Next up: applesauce. I’m sure that the combination of fewer ingredients and smaller jars will make me feel like a canning pro.


The finished product.

apple harvest