Check out Ruth Conniff's Isthmus Piece

Hey everyone - if you get a chance, please check out Ruth Conniff's piece on school hot lunches. We have been talking a lot about children and food lately at Mermaid and I feel like we as a community are on the verge of shifting our thoughts about this very important issue.
It is not enough, we believe, for those of us who can to send our kids to school with nutritious fare and leave the other children in our community to be fed for under $2.75. My kids have had plenty of hot lunch because I was too frazzled and disorganized to get 3 lunches made before the bus showed up. This is our collective life now. It is not out of our reach to make nutritious fresh food available at least some of the time to the children in our schools. Ruth mentions Alice Waters' program through Chez Panisse and also Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch through REAP. These are worth looking up on the internet.

Banana Bread with Fresh Ginger

Those of you following the travails of Mermaid staffers are warned that this post is, well, it's actually about food. Food we don't serve at the cafe, come to think of it. Banana bread. For I, creator of the blog, fictionalizer of staff, maker of genius-quality sandwiches, am also capable of fully realizing the best banana bread in Dane County.
We have all been tortured by dry, tasteless, spongy, banana bread. I personally tortured my husband and my oldest child through many, many versions of burnt, dry, or raw in the middle banana breads. As my staff now know, when things go badly for me, my first reaction is to weep, so let's give it up for Ben & Quinn who suffered and were ultimately rewarded with tasty, fattening, moist banana bread.
My mother, Katie, who makes arguably just as good of banana bread as me, taught me to make it. That is to say, my mother made it in front of me my whole life while I took little to no notice except when called upon to consume. Then I had to cajole, coerce, spy, and steal the secrets that make it so good. Upset as a young adult, I would call her and say, it's so dry. She would say, Oh? Hmmm...well, keep trying. Wench. She was probably biting her hand to keep from laughing at me.
The secrets. The secrets are easy, but rarely written about. But here on my blog I will reveal my top secret banana bread recipe, and the two easiest things anyone can do to pull off decent banana bread.
Secret One: If you would eat it, it doesn't belong in your bread. Banana bread bananas are disgusting. They are black, they are smelly pools of liquid that have little black hairs in them. They slip out of the peels like something from the bottom of a pond. If you are not willing to do this, your banana bread will always be inferior. So when your bananas go bad, stick'em in the freezer. When you're ready to bake, thaw them out to room temp and then peel.
Secret Two: Pop them out of the pan and wrap those babies up in tinfoil while they're still hot. Not plastic, tinfoil! Not tupperware, tinfoil! Then stick them in the fridge to cure. I usually make mini-loaves (Williams-Sonoma makes some that are really half-loaves with is even better) so that we can eat one right away, when it's mostly tasteless but hot and you're dying to eat it. The others are for when the loaves are cool, and dense, and moist, and flavorful.
The Recipe
1.5 C white whole wheat flour
1/2 C white sugar
1/2 C br. sugar
1/8 C honey
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
10 T butter, softened (it's more than a stick but worth it)
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
3 or 4 super-ripe bananas, a little more than a cup mashed, at room temperature
1 T fresh finely grated ginger.
1/4 C ground nuts, if desired
Preheat oven to 350. Grease bread pan. Sift, flour, soda, and salt together in large bowl. Set aside. Beat butter and sugars (not honey!) till fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla. Add honey, then bananas. Stir this very liquidy mixture into the dries in the bowl by hand. Last, stir in ginger, then nuts if using. Mix thoroughly and spoon into pan. Bake between 45-60 minutes (seriously, ovens are soooo different) until wooden pick comes out clean in center. Bread will brown quickly because of addition of honey. Let cool a couple minutes, then turn out and wrap in foil. If you are using mini loaves, the bread will be done much more quickly so keep an eye out, 25-35 min.

The Mighty Isis

This week if you get a latte from Isis, Queen of Heaven, Lady of the Green Crops, Star of the Sea, try to have some understanding. They had a PBS special this week on Pompeii, and she really shouldn’t watch that stuff. Never mind all the bad shit that went down in the waning days of her power in Egypt. Isis never really recovered from the catastrophe at Pompeii. The discovery and subsequent excavation of the city and its majestic Temple of Isis has been difficult for her to bear. The record is sketchy, but it appears that the Festival of Worship at the Temple of Isis in AD 79 was a particularly good one; Isis, wanting to reward the people, turned to Mount Vesuvius for some goddess-inspired “fireworks.” Ahem. After her followers’ screams were muffled by hot lava and 60 feet of smoking ash she packed quickly and left Europe. After a long period of unemployment (who wants that on their resume?) she wound up in North America and took a part-time job as An-gu, Ojibwe goddess of protection from tipi mold.
Deity employment is always a struggle for all parties involved; daily interaction with a goddess is a potent cocktail of excitement, worship, and frustration. The other day, I just had to put my foot down about some things. If you won’t reveal yourself, I said, customers wont know you’re there. This isn’t your Temple. You need the tips. When you punch in, you manifest. End of story. Basically, I was like, my house, my rules. I’m no chump for some immortal with some second-rate party tricks.
She shimmered then turned into a floating mass of feathers with a hundred eyes. Then a locust appeared at my feet. Kinda smallish for a locust, actually. Herein lies the somewhat pitiful circumstances that have led to the Lady of the Words of Power needing to supplement her income. I think she was trying to visit a plague upon me. She’s not very good at the big stuff. I needed to underscore my point, I have a business to run, so I very deliberately stepped on the locust. The last I heard, she ran down to the Yahara to fill it with tears. Tears of self-pity to be sure. She’ll be back. She needs the dough.
P.S. By special request, the Mermaid Café asks that those creepy, modern-day followers of Isis refrain from worship at the café.
P.P. S. To our concerned readers: we do have quite a few daily, devoted patrons. Customers are in no way coerced into returning to the café. It just seems to happen that way a lot. I blame the delicious lattes and excellent bakery. Employment as well is “at-will.” David loves working at the café. Occasionally he does seem pale and tired. Scottish people are naturally pale. He’s O.K. Everyone’s concern is touching. And Charlie, well, he’s such a good boy. I’ve rewarded him with a vacation. Colin & Cristen are simple, earnest people who love trees and fell in with a bad crowd. They seem skittish because they’re still learning the ropes at the café.

Show you the Muffins?

We make our own bakery every day (usurping earnest, squeaky-clean proletariat labor, as you now know) from scratch. So here is a fresh, hot muffin for our anonymous post. Just look at that sweet thing...

Hello comrades!
In the epic battle of proletariat vs. bourgeois we have struck a blow that will be remembered forever by everyday working class men and women as a day when the people rose up and took back what was rightfully theirs!
I am happy to say that I was able to retrieve the stolen bike, The treachery of these bourgeois goons, this injustice, comrades, will receive its answer, retaliation will be just, I assure you.
comrades, despite all the evidence to the contrary, on the other side of that counter it is like a scene from Indiana Jones and the temple of doom. Do not be fooled by her references to Sunprarie or growing up in Wisconsin, behind all that friendly talk and the pretty smile is a cold blooded, tyrannical madwomen.

this is about much more than just One bike belonging to One man.

nonstop sandwich and soup production, countless off the clock hours slaving over the east side’s best muffins, zero protection rights for ideas, forcing pregnant women to work up until the day of birth, confiscating employee modes of transportation to prevent them from ever leaving. Our meager hourly pay is monitored on a daily basis by a software program that only our employer can see or understands and this is altered every two weeks at our employer’s arbitrary discretion. Worst of all we exist in a extremely hostile working environment that promotes the degradation of men, and the emotional/mental breakdown of employees; that is our yoke.
Friends, comrades, remember the workers of the mermaid, they have fought hard and valiant, and struggle on every day, and despite insurmountable odds, we continue to produce. We keep moving because if we stop we die. Please stand in solidarity with the workers who fall under the giant umbrella of a certain east side clan.
where you see a bike, think of us...
I must sign off now, I fear my illegal presence on this server may be detected I must always stay on the move. Signing out,
In solidarity
D2

The Father of Existentialism Strikes Again

I'm giving the bike back. As of tonight, David has taken to his bed, clutching a tattered copy of Kierkegaard's journals. He refuses to work. The sandwiches are cold. The Mermaid kitchen is in tatters. Charlie went to visit him (not to shake him down for change) and reported that he is lying around in his boxers, intermittently opening up his window and sticking his head out in the rain/sleet/snow. Apparently, he hopes to contract pneumonia and die. Just to get back at us. Well, he can die for no reason, then, because his bike is in the basement of Mermaid. Now if I can just convince Colin that it's over before it's too late.
Shannon called to try to cheer him up and get him to go out for a drink. He quoted thus, "Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. " Some people should not be allowed to read philosphy. More to come.

The Ransom Note from The Bad Guys

I guess I knew that none of the 6 ransom notes would be any good. It was impulsive to take the bike, and even more awful and impulsive to turn to The Bad Guys to make my point. Charlie & Colin are dangerous men. They were licking their chops at the thought of breaking Dave's knees over this. But crafty they are not...Charlie is connected and I don't want this to go too far. As far as I know Colin and his wife don't hang out with any more of those ecoterrorists. But suddenly I'm realizing maybe he just happened into a good cause where he could apply his shady underworld behavior. He was sort of gently humming Kenny Rogers under his breath today. God, I just realized it was The Gambler. I'm a little frightened that I haven't seen David. I suppose he's trying to come up with the money, somehow. I should of thought of the repercussions.

Bicycle for Ransom

Introducing David. He did not heed the warnings about the potential fate of his bent, cruddy, ridiculous, one-wheeled bicycle left chained to a parking meter for weeks on end in the front of my Cafe. Also introducing David's bicycle, formerly Eileen's bicycle, loved beyond reason and compare despite having seen far better days. Missing a wheel at the moment. If you knew my family you would understand how easy it was for me to come up with the idea of kidnapping the bike as a natural consequence type thing. Eeeeeasy as pie. Yet this morning I am having difficulty managing to think up a clever way to return it.
Possession, I have heard, is 9/10ths of the law. I am not a lawyer, but right now I believe that statement to be true. Time and feelings of possession seem to grow with each other. Like secret knowledge, possession sparks different instincts. One can never go back to one's prepossession thoughts. Of course, people hear about employee theft all the time. But they hear far less about employer theft-- yet here I sit. Employer, thief. To be fair to myself, I did give warning. And I have had help. What price? Next I shall introduce Charlie & Colin, A.K.A The Bad Guys (They wrote the ransom note. Actually, several ransom notes. God, where they punched in when they did that?)