Tandoori Chicken

I had a good idea for a post today, but unfortunately, I forgot it before I could get to my computer.   If it comes back to me, I’ll post it tomorrow.

Here’s a substitute post.   Great for that George Foreman or other indoor grill!

Tandoori Chicken

INGREDIENTS:

• 3/4 cup coarsely chopped onion

• 1 teaspon coarsely chopped ginger

• 2 garlic cloves, peeled

• 1/2 cup plain low-fat yogurt

• 1 Tbsp lemon juice

• 1 tsp. paprika

• 1 tsp. cumin

• 1 tsp. coriander

• 1/2 tsp. salt

• 1/2 tsp. chili powder

• 1/4 tsp. black pepper

• Dash of nutmeg

• 4 (4-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

Cooking spray

METHOD:

1. Place first three ingredients in a food processor; process until finely chopped.  Add yogurt and the next 8 ingredients (yogurt through nutmeg); pulse 4 times or until blended.

2. Make 3 diagonal cuts 1/4″ deep across top of each chicken breast half.  Combine chicken and yogurt mixture in a large zip-top plastic bad.  Seal and marinate in refrigerator 8 hours or overnight, turning occasionally.

3. Prepare grill or broiler.

4. Remove chicken breast from bag; discard marinade.  Place chicken on grill rack or broiler pan coated with cooking spray; cook 6 minutes on each side or until chicken is done.

[Via http://armedbear.wordpress.com]

Look Mom, I Can Cook

In January Ben and I will have been married 5 years. The first 4 years of our marriage were so crazy (multiple jobs, law school, living 1100 miles apart) that we never really got into cooking. We ordered a lot of take-out, cooked frozen meals, and made simple dishes. Now that we’ve settled into an adult-like life, I’ve decided that we are going to start cooking and eating like grown-ups. Since so many other book bloggers seem interested in cooking and food-related posts, I thought I would document our attempts. I plan on making this a semi-regular post. Below I have three of the dishes we tried.  I will take more pictures in the future. When I cooked these meals, I didn’t think I’d be writing about them, too.

Quick note: I don’t eat beef or pork so that is why you will find a lot of chicken recipes. I’m also hoping to find some good vegetarian dishes to try (that Ben will eat).

Pasta Gnocchi with Sausage and Tomato

Note: the grocery store did not cooperate with our plan so we substituted a lot of the ingredients including the gnocchi.

• 1 lb 1 oz pasta gnocchi (we used regular shells)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 14 oz Italian sausages (we used chicken sausage)
• 1 red onion – finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves – finely chopped
• 1 lb 12 oz – tinned chopped tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon caster sugar (we used confectioner)
• 1 1/2 oz basil – torn
• 1/2 cup romano cheese – grated (we used packaged romano and mozzerella cheese)
• 1 cup of water (I would use 1/2 cup next time)

Summary: Cook pasta and drain. Meanwhile, heat 2 teaspoons oil in large pan; add sausages and cook through. Drain and slice. Wipe pan and add remaining oil. Cook onion and garlic over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add tomato, sugar and water. Season with black pepper. Reduce heat and simmer for 12 minutes until thickened and reduced a little. Stir sauce, pasta, basil, and cheese together. Serves 4.

Time: 15 minutes prep; 30 minutes cook.

Thoughts: Ben really liked this one. I wasn’t a fan of the sausage (not a surprise). I would like to try this with real gnocchi instead of plain pasta. My sause never reallly thickened so I cheated a little and drained it so it was less saucy than it should have been. I would make it again but keep the sausage to Ben’s portion only.

Cajun Chicken with Fresh Tomato and Corn Salsa

• 2 corn cobs – boil 5 minutes and remove kernels
• 2 vine-ripened tomatoes – diced
• 1 cucumber – finely diced
• 2 tablespoons cilantro leaves – roughly chopped (I used dried)
• 4 skinless chicken breasts
• 1/4 cup Cajun seasoning
• 2 tablespoons lime juice (I used real lime)
• lime wedges – to serve

Summary: Pound chicken until 2 cm thick. Coat chicken with Cajun seasoning. Use chargrill pan or barbeque plate (we used a Foreman grill) to cook chicken through. Mix corn, tomatoes, cucmber, and cilantro in a bowl for salsa. Stir lime juice into salsa right before serving. Serve with lime wedges, salad, and bread. Serves 4 (I halved the recipe).

Time: 10 minues prep; 15 minutes cook

Thoughts: We both liked the chicken. I liked the salsa but Ben wasn’t a fan and he can’t articulate why. We used the leftovers to make a salad the next night which was convenient. We will make the chicken again but will probably modify the salsa.

Stir-Fried Chicken with Ginger and Cashews

• 1 1/2 tablespoons oil
• 8 scallions – cut into pieces
• 3 garlic cloves – crushed
• 3-in piece of ginger root – finely shredded
• 2 skinless chicken breasts – cut into strips
• 2 red peppers – cut into strips
• 5 1/2 oz snowpeas
• 3 1/2 oz cashews
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil

Summary: Heat oil in wok and then add scallions, garlic, and ginger. After a minute, add chicken and cook through. Then add peppers, snowpeas, and cashews. When peppers have softened, add soy sauce and sesame oil. Cook 1-2 minutes longer. Serve with rice. Serves 4.

Time: 20 minutes prep; 10 minutes cook

Thoughts: We loved this recipe. Stir-fry was something we’ve often made but we usually had a little lazier version. This one tasted a little more Asian than our Americanized version. We will definitely be making this one again.

All three of these recipes are from 30 Minute Meals: A Common Sense Guide.

[Via http://mybooksmylife.wordpress.com]

Thanksgiving 2009: A recap.

I am thankful for family and friends, having a wonderful puppy dog who protects me, and the opportunities I have. I passed all of my teaching exams, my second internship, and am graduating in the spring. Really and truly blessed.

As for the break, well, there is just so much to cover. First of all, I got a chance to come back to Tallahassee for the first time since September. So that was wonderful. First couple days I just lazed about, went to the Museum of Florida History, didn’t do too much. Wednesday is where it starts getting eventful and if you are a cat lover or hate dogs then I would suggest not reading the rest of the paragraph. Mom took a half day and we went to get a Christmas tree and begin setting up our decorations. Since we were working outside, we figured we’d let the dogs sit in the front yard (attached to a tree). Well as I was getting Bear, he escaped. And everything after that is kind of blurred. But what it all comes down to is that Bear killed the neighbors cat and there was nothing we could do about it. It was a terrible and sad day. However we did come up with some awful jokes.

Thursday being Thanksgiving, there was a lot of cooking. Dad went to Cocoa Beach to be with his family and Mom, Jamie, and I stayed home since I hadn’t been around in a couple months and this was where I wanted to spend it. I think it went off splendidly. The only problem was that the brine made the gravy super salty, so I’m gonna suggest only one cup. And that miscalculation could be that we used a smaller bird then most of the brine recipes I referenced. I got to bring some left overs home so that was a huge score. Plus mom had gotten me some extra stuff at the grocery store (you know the buy one get one free stuff) so I don’t think I’ll have to go to the grocery store between now and next time I come back home. Later that night we went to a self-service car wash that also has a dog wash attached (more later on this) and got the dogs and their crates washed and cleaned for the drive back to Tampa.

So, on to today. We traveled back down to Tampa. Pretty uneventful. Bear is happy being back, put another hole in my screen trying to get at a cat from the second story. Shelby is adjusting nicely to being an indoor dog after 8 years of living outdoors and has only had one accident so far.

Tomorrow is the FSU/UF game. Seriously, if the Noles can win this one, the rest of the season would go unnoticed. It would also make my year. And who doesn’t want to make my year? Unfortunately I am being required to attend the USF vs. Miami game that happens to be played at the exact same time. Who in their right mind would do this? 2/3 of Florida is going to be watching the Florida/State game and only 1/3 will watch USF because they are Miami fans. Ugh. Well, you’ll see my in all my FSU glory tomorrow at Raymond James.

All in all, a Thanksgiving we will all remember.

[Via http://jnwells.wordpress.com]

Thanksgiving In Italy

Many people find themselves traveling in Italy over the Thanksgiving holiday. One can have trouble getting a perfect Thanksgiving meal because many ingredients do not exist in Italy such as sweet potatos and cranberries. These are just not part of the Italian table. Dishes can be substituted though and pumpkin is ubiquitous so one shouldn’t fear missing a good pumpkin pie or pumpkin tart for dessert.

While turkey can be found on some menus in Italy, there is no real culinary tradition that has turkey as its centerpiece except in a small town in the Abruzzo region called Canzano. Abruzzo is in central Italy and has both mountains and the sea among its treasures. It is known for its strong cuisine and hardy and stoic people.

Tacchino alla Canzanese is the most famous dish from this corner of Abruzzo near the city of Teramo. Canzano, a medieval hilltown at 500 meters above sea level with a stunning view of the Gran Sasso, Maiella and Laga mountains, has been making this turkey dish since the 1800s.

The turkey is cooked with peppercorns, salt, rosemary, garlic, bay leaves and veal bones for five hours in the oven. When the turkey, better if a female bird, is done, the gelatin from the drippings gets spread over the turkey and refrigerated. The dish is, in fact, served cold and is sliced turkey with a gelatinous covering. Apparently each family has their own recipe which is jealously guarded.

While Italians do not really celebrate Thanksgiving, there are many harvest holidays in the autumn months which celebrate different foods and the arrival or the end of the seasons. Tacchino alla Canzanese is generally eaten as part of the traditional Christmas meal in this part of Abruzzo.

Wines from Abruzzo tend to be made from one of two grapes: Trebbiano d’Abruzzo or Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. The first produces light white wines which can be paired with pasta dishes or served as an apertif. Sometimes it is made into a blend with chardonnay.

Montepulciano d’Abruzzo is a red grape variety which makes medium bodied, fruity wines with nice acidity. This grape has come into favor in the past 10 years and is widely available in the United States. Two very well known producers are Emidio Pepe who has been making organic wines for more than 40 years and Giuseppe Masciarelli whose wines are constantly considered some of the best from the region.

Only one D.O.C.G. wine comes from this area and that is the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Colline Teramane wines from the Colline Teramane. Montepulciano d’Abruzzo could be a good wine with any type of turkey this Thanksgiving.

[Via http://radicchioblog.com]

Presentation

I have two days to sleep past 6am! I’ll be catching up with blog posts, I’ve had several in mind over the past few days. I’m really beat tonight, though, so this is going to be brief. I was thinking tonight about something I read recently… not sure where it was. Michael Pollan? Healthy Cooking? Both? But it was about the importance of presentation. How beautifully presented food makes the meal a better experience. And you know, I think that’s true. And it’s really not difficult to do quickly. Tonight’s dinner was simple – pasta and a quick saute of spinach, tomato, and olives with some basil and vegetarian beef flavoring, and a sprinkle of cheddar/parmesan on top – but doesn’t it look nice prepared like this? Not my best example, but that’s okay.

Dinner!

I love imagining hostessing someday when I have my own place. Pretty dishes and well-presented, delicious, food.

[Via http://linesiya.wordpress.com]

Hail to the Chef

I totally have a crush on Alton Brown.

I mean, I don’t want to kiss him or anything, but I would love to sit down at the dinner table with him and listen to him expound on why the green beans taste so good steamed. So anyway, DH and I watched the episode “Steak Your Claim” after which I made DH stop by the store on his way home from work a few days later and pick up some steaks. An expensive meal, 18 dollars to feed seven. But, if you divide it by plate, it’s only like, three dollars a plate.

DH and I love steak, but it’s always a hit and miss event. Until Alton Brown walked us through it.

We actually bought a cast iron skillet in preparation for the meal. This is what you do.  Season your steaks with a little canola oil (it has a high smoke point) and kosher salt and pepper. The kosher salt is jagged and sticks to itself and the meat, making for a nice texture. Your skillet has been heating up in the 500 degree oven. You transfer the skillet to your burner, put it on high heat, and sear your steaks about thirty seconds on each side, without fussing with them. Then you put the skillet and steaks into the 500 degree oven and leave in for four minutes, if your steak is about an inch thick.

We couldn’t believe how perfectly cooked they were! I love medium rare, and that is exactly what I got. The steaks were juicy, hot, flavorful…sigh. Thank you, Alton.

[Via http://v1ct0r1a.wordpress.com]

Out of Step

A couple of weeks ago, I fell in love…with the stories and the style of Maeve Brennan. The more I learned about her life, the more I became lost in thoughts about pace and setting; the idea that Maeve seemed out of step with the days about which she wrote, how slowly she seemed to move through eras and clock-measured hours, how strongly she craved a city that stayed still. I felt like her habits reflected an obstinate digging-in of heels, a refusal to update, to move along, to accept that one day becomes the next until eventually, you have a past very different from your present.

In an effort to contextualise her essays, I cast a more critical eye upon myself: the words I choose, my turns of phrase, the photographs I pair with each story I post here. And, sifting through three years of my essays and articles, I reconsidered how quickly things change – style and taste, patterns of consumption, social trends – and the pace at which those things come into then pass out of favour (sometimes fast, sometimes slow). And, it began to seem reasonable that Maeve’s seemingly old-fashioned 1968 was snuggled up close against my 1973 birth.

In the five years separating those dates, my parent got married, and their wedding photos include guests dressed like the people described in Maeve’s stories. A quick flash and gone were the pillbox hats, stuffy textiles and dinners at which it would have been inappropriate for a lady to appear alone, replaced by the white pantsuit, silver slippers and broad necktie my parents wore at the altar. And, a couple years later, their stylish haircuts, bright red sofa, bell-bottomed jeans and me, a shrieking flannel bundle.

Five years…easy for an eccentric and troubled lady like Maeve to find herself out of step, without realising she’d missed a step at all. I often consider social graces and standards, and the quaint manners most people my age never learned. My knowledge of napkin etiquette, cutlery-handling and table-laying seems like a deliberate and cultivated fetish. But, I also have a lot of tattoos, wear jeans to the office, say words like “motherfucker” and “dickweed” when I ought to be more polite, and am often unsure what to do with my hands. I teeter between being prissier than necessary and too casual for the places I hang out.

I know I’m not down with the kids, am reminded of this by music on the radio, posters on billboards, text-message jargon that infiltrates everyday conversation. And, now and then I am jarred by just how Maeve-like I am. She wrote a wonderful story about a group of young ladies she encountered in Midtown circa 1967, dressed in miniskirts and fishnet stockings, tall and broad (in fact, her essay seemed poised to expose a trio of transvestites, but Maeve held tightly her conviction that these ladies were indeed girls). Confronted by their forward behaviour, she ducked her head and kept walking, paying no attention to the bold way the young women made eye contact with passersby or the subject matter of their loud conversation as it cut the evening breeze.

The other day, I was appalled by the young women walking ahead of me, as they chatted and gossiped, recapping their weekend and mostly just shit-talking absent friends. The loudest girl told the others about “some guy I hooked up with this weekend, he had the nerve to friend me on Facebook! What a loser, man!” That he was “some guy” and not a more limiting ”that guy” or “the guy” suggested there had been several; an unfair judgment perhaps, but the way she rendered him nameless, one of a horde, and scorned him for trying to follow up the next afternoon…It made me feel weird and old and disappointed, the way she made fun of him for having the nerve to give a shit about her after they slept together, the way she broadcast his lameness and her lewdness at the top of her voice.

Her behaviour was not only at odds with how I live my adult life, but was also at odds with how I behaved at her age. Casual connections are fine if that’s what works for you, but I can’t imagine shouting about them amongst friends, and certainly not in the street. If I consider the tone of my writing, I see how ill-suited it would be to describe that girl’s day, like a contemporary Maeve attempting to catalogue New York’s changing streets. And that’s just their conduct – I haven’t even broached the matter of their leggings, schlumpy boots, bomber jackets and lurid cosmetics.

Conversely, there’s a bar I’ve been hanging out at after work the past two months or so, a place that is out of step with me in two ways: the prices listed on the bill of fare are generally well above what I can technically afford for wine and snacks; and the majority of patrons are curiously caught between real and advertised age. I am probably older than a lot of the ladies there, but looking around one evening with another girlfriend, we noted that we probably looked more like their babysitters than like those ladies. And, quite likely, we were a good five years older despite looking much younger, but their carriage, attire, the way they primped in the ladies room made me feel like a dumpy kid, someone unsure how to pass through an elegant space.

So then, how to reconcile my fondness for that swel-egant martini bar and a recent Friday night in, when friends and I started with martinis at five o’clock, prepared an excellent dinner of roast chicken, potatoes and wilted greens, then got right plastered on the rest of the gin, several bottles of red, and ended the evening with dessert eaten straight from our palms, hands wiped clean on our jeans, and a Star Wars light saber battle that wrecked half the sitting room? I can teeter on heels with the best of them, and own a collection of sneakers, hoodies, naked-lady tattoos and silk pantyhose. Sometimes, I wear those things in a jumble; other times, I clean up rather sweet-looking. How to reconcile the sword fight with the fact that I refer to the place in my friend’s apartment where the sofa is located as her “sitting room”? For that matter, how to reconcile the fact that I overthink language but often talk with my hands, punctuating stories with dirty words and curious gestures? So much weight on words, and yet, so much disregard for the finer points of communication, now and then.

[Via http://cakesandneckties.wordpress.com]

The roast is almost done. The table is set the potatoes can be put on soon.

The skiers are in their last lap on TV and I’m knitting fast ’cause it’s exciting!

[Via http://lisbethbula.wordpress.com]

Quick & Easy Faux Ceviche

Ceviche is raw fish shrimp and other shellfish or sea food,   marinated cooked lime juice. It is very popular in coastal parts of Mexico knows for their ports and fishing industry.The marinated fish ,  is further flavored with the addition of chopped: chiles(serranos), tomatoes, avocado, onion.  Then the mixture is served a top golden tostadas.

Now if you’ve ever tasted REAL ceviche, then you know that there is no substitute for such a rich, yet simple & refreshingly satisfying delicacy. The problem is that making Ceviche is like making sushi, you must be able to start with the absolute freshest fish due to the whole raw factor. Finding fish sometimes can be a hassle, you need it to be  fresh, cheap can and sometimes you just don’t get lucky. Plus at times we are way to put on our chef hats. Sometimes we are just looking for a quick yet yummy bite to eat.

That’s where our “Faux Ceviche” comes in. Of course it’s no where near the real deal, but it’s an interesting concoction that taste pretty good.

Chop your ingrdients into small equal dices, make sure that you have enough ingredient to flavor your tuna, but out number or overpower. Make sure to finely chop, this is particularly important for ingredients such as onion & chile. The smaller the dices, the more even &  mellow the flavor will be. Trust me in the middle of enjoying your tostada you don’t wan’t to bite into a big ol fragrant onion piece or a spicy chunk of chile. After your done with your ingredients, open your can of tuna, I recommend tuna in water, because this is a dish that should taste fresh & light. Tuna in oil can have a more of  deeper complex flavor, we want simple & clean. Drain your tuna & add your chopped ingredients, don’t forget your salt & pepper . Then add your lime juice & mix up evenly. Refrigerate & let sit & chill for as long as you wish, there’s no need for waiting too long since it’s cooked all the way. Some people like to add cucumber to the mix, but I think that works better with fresh fish, on the other hand I’ve never tried it on tuna. If you’re intrepid enough go ahead & try.

AS ALWAYS, BUEN PROVECHO(Bon appetite, enjoy your meal.)

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

(Amount will vary according to portions, remember you need enough to top tostadas with a moderate amount not to heavily.)

Tomatoes = any kind will do, but trying going for a firm variety.

Limes= because the tuna is not raw, you will only need enough to flavor the Tuna.

Onions = Red or white will do. You just need enough to sprinkle into the mix not a whole bunch. If you are making very little, you probably won’t even use up a whole one.

Chiles= This recipe calls for Serranos.

Avocados= A good avacado will not be to green or to dark. Make sure if you squeeze it, that it is not too firm or give in too much. These are indications of a  flavorless  unripe one or one that is bitter, mushy and past its prime.

Tostadas= find them in the internationals foods isle, or next to the tortillas.

[Via http://melatesupermegachidoymas.wordpress.com]

saturday favorite #20

I’m not really a fan of the cold. If it’s cool enough to wear a light jacket, it’s too cold. I’m in the right state, right? Ha!

What I DO love about once it starts getting cold is making all different kinds of soups and chili’s! Yum!! There’s nothing more comforting than a hot bowl of soup when it’s cold outside. It makes it officially feel like winter. Even when “winter” in Arizona is still 78 degrees outside.

We’ve been spending time at my mom’s house a lot lately and she always makes the most yummy dinners! She’s made this a couple times in the past month or so and I HAD to have the recipe. And then I HAD to pass it on to you. It’s Cream of Chicken and Wild Rice Soup. It’s so easy- you just throw it all in your crock pot and walk away for a few hours. And about 10 minutes before you’re ready to eat, throw some Texas toast in the oven as a side. I’m all about dinners that are simple to make and that are full of flavor. You will love this if you try it! It’s comforting to me for some reason. And in this season, I think all of us could use a little comfort!

 

Ingredients

- 3 chicken breast halves- cooked and diced

- 1 box of Uncle Ben’s long grain & wild rice

- 1/2 C. uncooked wild rice

- 1/2 C. carrots, onions and celery- all chopped

- 1 can (14.5 oz) chicken broth

- 1 can Cream of Chicken soup

- 1 can Cream of Celery soup

- 1 pint half & half

- 1/2 Tbsp Mrs. Dash

 

Directions

1. Prepare wild rice according to the basic cooking method on the package.

2. Add all other ingredients into slow cooker, including the chicken that has already been cooked.

3. Cook on low for 2-3 hours

4. Serve with Texas toast and enjoy!

 

… Yeeessss…

The rainforest is yummy.

I am in no way an unschooler.  Despite the fact that it’s not really the educational philosophy I agree with, it just would not work with my personality. I like plans and lists and schedules. I like curriculum. When I was in school myself I liked worksheets and tests (I was a good test taker so I liked them). I was kind of a teacher’s dream.

However, one of the advantages of homeschooling is the ability to throw all those plans and lists and schedules out the window sometimes. To ignore all the curriculum on the shelf and follow the rabbit trails where they lead. Today was one of those days.

We’ve been working our way through the One Small Square series of books for science the past month or so. I cannot recommend these books highly enough. They are little gems. John loves reading them and we both learn a lot. They have fun activities you can do throughout but even without doing the activities they are well worth the purchase price.

Today at lunch we read the one on the Tropical Rain Forest.

Afterwards, I asked John to tell me five things he had learned about the rainforest as a narration. His first thing was that chocolate comes from the rainforest. This wasn’t actually in the book, but he remembered it from some other time. The chocolate comment reminded me of this.

I had bought this little kit quite a long time ago to go with something we were doing last year but then didn’t get around to using it. I got it out and asked John if he wanted to do it. Not a big surprise, but the answer was YES!

So we got out the kit and made chocolate. I took some pictures but no matter how many times H. teaches me to use the camera for close-up photos all my food pictures come out looking awful. So basically I have a lot of photos of us with a bowl of brown gloppy stuff and then the brown gloppy stuff in the little paper candy liners. Somehow I don’t think they would add a lot to this post.

I will say it was surprisingly easy and made some quite tasty chocolate. We made some with peanut butter (John’s idea) and some with mini marshmallows (David’s idea). I thought the peanut butter ones were the best.  Almost good enough to make me into an unschooling convert.

The Most Delicious Split Pea Soup in the Known Universe

Mrs. Fussy keeps a small spiral bound notebook of meaningful recipes.  Most of the pages are empty.  And every recipe that is in the book is transcribed from the original source by her own hand.

The book includes “Daddy’s Pancakes” which are the pancakes her father is famous for making from an old family recipe.  The original was written on a small scrap of paper.  And although it was wisely laminated, that did not prevent fading.  Luckily we have it captured in the book.

It has been made very clear to me that this family recipe is not to be shared.  Sorry.

But I wanted to give you a sense of the gravitas of this recipe book.  I really only grab for the book when making one thing: Split Pea Soup.  The version I am about to share with you is one of Mrs. Fussy’s favorite things to eat.  And I think it’s pretty fantastic too.

The notebook has a citation that the recipe is from the San Francisco Chronicle.  Well, thanks to the wonders of the internets, you can see the original context of the recipe here (if you scroll down to the second recipe from the bottom).

It turns out this isn’t the San Francisco Chronicle’s Split Pea Soup recipe, as I have been mistakenly assuming for the past several years.  It is Anne Kirby’s split pea soup recipe.  And by now she should be a 79-year-old-grandmother, but was 71 when her recipe was published.

If you want the recipe, you are just going to have to click on the link.

I’ll give you a few pointers though.  My favorite thing about this recipe is the sweet delicate carrot pieces in the soup.  They just are so soft and sweet, and a wonderful counterpoint to the peas.  And I can never get enough.  So eventually I started doubling the carrots, and it made me even happier.

I would still do this even if I weren’t using the dynamite carrots from my favorite producer at the Troy winter farmer’s market.

Getting a good ham hock is trickier than one might expect.  I was not terribly happy with the local happy-meat producers.  The problem wasn’t the meat, but the cure and the smoke.  So today, I am going off in another direction.  Recently I discovered Rolf’s Pork Store.  And they smoke their own hocks.

Despite being all out, they were very helpful in helping me find replacements from what they did have on hand.  I walked out of the store with a smoked pork chop end and some smoked riblets.  We figured that combined it was a good combination of bone and meat.

The new batch of ham hocks will be ready on Wednesday at Rolf’s.  Maybe I’ll see you there.

That next round of hocks will be used for some other delicious winter bean dish.  Because when I make this split pea soup, I always make a double batch and put some away in the freezer.  Then it is on hand for weeks.  All I have to do is melt it down, add water as needed, and adjust for salt.

Beer goes great with this, but I also love it with one of my favorite white wines from California, Navarro Vineyards’ estate bottled dry gewürztraminer.  You would be hard pressed to find it locally, but they ship.  And if you were looking to get me something for the holidays, this taste of home would certainly be warmly received.  They make some dynamite Méthode à l’Ancienne pinot noir too.  So keep your eyes peeled for these two bottles on restaurant wine lists.  And let me know if you see them anywhere locally.

Enjoy.

i can't remember tuesday, 11/17

Tuesday was a blur.  I was feeling so much better having been under the weather yesterday, and wanted to just pack in as much as I could throughout the day.  I know I was out late – I didn’t get home until after 11pm.  I can hardly remember what I did or where I went, but what I find is the pictures of my meals often jog my memory.  Let’s see what happens.

Breakfast:  lemon water; oats, almonds, water, cinnamon, arugula; traditional medicinals chai.  Pretty typical, nothing exciting here.

Lunch:  honeybush tea; spicy lentil soup; sauteed mushrooms; cornbread with butter; green beans; chicken; water.  Oh, this was delicious, and I enjoyed it sitting outside on my stoop.  I’d taken a walk down to the river before lunch.  I made the cornbread in the morning – it’s all whole grain and really easy to make. 

Dinner:  cinnamon tea; kale, arugula, avocado, pomegranate, black beans, sweet potato; blue corn chips; water; waffles with butter and syrup.  I had dinner at the office before I left for Storytelling Class.  That’s where I was into the evening, at class.  By the time I got back from DC it was after 11pm.  Felt compelled to toast up a waffle and eat it with butter and syrup.  It was tasty.  I had another.

Little Bits

Today finds me with a little bit to say about a lot of things but not a lot to say about anything.  Soo…here’s a compilation of those Little Bits…

Fortune Cookie was RIGHT!  

Sort of…  Last week I treated myself to lunch at Panda Express.  The fortune cookie that came with the lunch said I would soon find a new source of money.  Hhhmm…will my freelance quests have positive outcomes???  Will I win the lottery??  Will I win the 10% off coupon drawing at the Patternworks or the gift card prize for taking Michael’s on-line survey??  Is a new job coming my way???

The answer as of today?  I played the lottery Saturday and I won!!!  SuperLotto Plus to be exact!!!  Yep…I won $2!

New Jammies

I did stop at Kohls yesterday and picked up a fifth pair of jammies.  After taking off the coupon and the Kohls cash and adding in tax I paid $12 for them.  I bought a pair with a purple top and black background bottoms with purple and green verticle solid stripes alternating with white, purple, green and yellow verical stripes made up of dots.

Fruit Loops

I’m not a cold cereal kinda gal except for occassional bowls of Raisin Bran or Frosted Mini Wheats (the latter are great for nibbling dry) but this past Saturday I bought a box of Fruit Loops.  After putting away all my groceries I grabbed a bowl and filled it with Fruit Loops.  Three questions instantly came to mind. 

1.  When did Fruit Loops change to pastel colors?

2.  When did they add blue to the color palette?

3.  What happened to the sugar crystals on the rings (close examination of one ring was necessary for this question).

At least they tasted like I remembered…!

Earthquake!

This past Saturday night I was still awake at 11:54PM when I heard it coming.  Yep, I could hear the earthquake coming for 4 or 5 seconds before it finally arrived.  When it did arrive it was a disappointing 1 or 2 seconds in duration — ca-chunk, thunk, and it was done, no real shaking. 

As I retrieved my laptop to check out the quake’s location and strength I was wondering if that was it or if there’d be a bit more to this quake.  Those few seconds of being aware that it was coming built up my anticipation…and what actually happened was NOT worth the anticipation.  On the other hand, there was no damage so that was definitely a good thing (of all the quakes I’ve felt since I moved here none have been strong enough to do any damage and that’s fine by me)!

The quake was a 3.3 centered about 25 miles from the house…a baby compared to the 4.7 and 4.9 ones that I’ve felt, and the 3.7 that was centered closer to my house.

No Turning Back

The non-refundable deposit has been made for my BIG adventure so there’s no turning back now!!  The adventure is scheduled to begin at 10:30AM on Saturday, January 30th.

Really — this is a SERIOUSLY big adventure that will have you debating about my sanity, or lack there of.  Check back here the weekend after Thanksgiving for all the details so you can weigh in on the sanity question.

Toothpaste on my Shoulder

I have NO idea how that happened, but it did!  I’ve monitored my tooth brushing routine for more than a week and am still so clueless that I’ve decided I’m never going to know the answer.

The Friday before I went for my haircut I brushed my teeth then went into the kitchen to put together my lunch and my eat-on-the-go breakfast.  I came back to my bathroom, looked in the mirror, did a double-take, uttered “HUH?”, frowned, took off my red t-shirt, scrubbed it with the washcloth then put it back on.

Seems that somehow I had managed to get 4 pencil sized dots of blue toothpaste on the front of my t-shirt just below my right shoulder.  I didn’t have the rechargeable toothbrush in motion when I took it out of my mouth, at least not that I could remember, and the t-shirt was clean when I put it on, but somehow toothpaste ended up on my shoulder.

Since I already had a red barette in my hair and wasn’t willing to change it, and my other red t-shirts that are okay to wear to work were in the laundry, I had no choice but to wash off the toothpaste and put the t-shirt back on. 

Turkey Anyone?

I am the proud owner of a 21.1 pound frozen Butterball turkey!  And it only set me back $10.34!!!  The turkey was 48 cents a pound if you spent $50 or more at Winco (most awesome food store).  I rarely spend that much but I did stock up on a few things, including a splurge on the aforementioned Fruit Loops, so my total would exceed $50 and I could bring home my treasure.

The turkey is buried in Fritz (the chest freezer in my garage) and will be thawed over Christmas so I can cook it and then restock my freezers with all the frozen meals.  My record is 66 meals (fresh and frozen) from an 18 pound turkey so I’ll be curious to see what the take is from 21.1 pounds!

Oh yeah…to make room for the turkey I had to take out the 3 containers of turkey stock I’d frozen this past summer from my last turkey cookfest.  This weekend I’ll make the soup from this summer’s turkey and then in December when I cook the new turkey I’ll freeze more stock and make that soup in April.

Coyotes

It’s been a quiet summer as far as they mangy four-legged wild animals go but they’re making up for it now!  They are in howling overdrive, and not just in the middle of the night – last night they were screeching at 8PM!!

I had never heard coyotes before moving to Southern California and when I did hear them I didn’t know the noise was coyotes until I talked with my neighbor and he filled me in.

If you’ve never heard coyotes the best way I can describe their howling is that it sounds like a screaming baby…a baby that doesn’t need to take a breath.  It’s a little on the high-pitched side and for me, it doesn’t really sound like the howling that Hollywood has made famous in their movies and TV shows.  It is much more annoying.

I’m not sure exactly where the coyotes are but they’re not in my neighborhood.  They may be in the field behind my house as when they wake me up out of a sound sleep I have heard them screeching and some dogs yelping, and there are some barely visible houses back in that field. 

All I ask is that the coyotes stay away from the herd of sheep.

It’s Cold!

Our daytime highs have been struggling to get higher than the mid-70’s lately, sometimes not even reaching 70!   That wouldn’t be bad if our overnight lows weren’t going so low — yesterday morning it was a chilly 36 degrees outside with last week’s lows being in the mid-40’s.

That wouldn’t be bad either IF I remembered to do one thing.  CLOSE my windows at night!!!!  Sheesh…the house has been as cold as 62 in the morning when I get up!   This past weekend I actually went outside a couple times and sat in the sun in order to warm up!

My house only has one window that faces south, a huge advantage in the 110+ summers but a disadvantage in the colder months as the sun work its magic and heat up the house.  November is way too early to even consider putting on the heat, even for just one cycle to take the chill out of the air.  Instead I’m bundling up and toughing it out – in other words, I’m practicing for my trip back east next week!

The good news?  The previously mentioned coyotes were screeching early last night so I remembered to close the windows!  The house was a *toasty* 64 degrees when I got out of bed this morning! 

Wrap Up

OK, that’s it for today’s round of Little Bits.  I’m off to get my morning routine going so I can scoot into work early…  Have a SUPER day!

sunny sunday, 11/15

What a gorgeous day!  Such a nice break from the dreary, dismal rainy days of late.  Spent the day with my family at the Redskins game, and miracle of all miracles, they won!  It was a fun day.

Breakfast:  lemon water; oats, arugula, almonds, cranberries, water; traditional medicinals chai.  Wanted to keep it very savory and steer clear of the sweet flavors altogether.  After dessert for the last several days I’m in over my head with the sugars, and I was feeling pretty puny this morning.  I only got about four hours of sleep last night; I’m fairly certain it was not decaf that I was enjoying by the tankful.  That said, the way I drink I could very well have taken in a sleep-disturbing load of caffeine even though it was decaf.

Lunch:  water; decaf; bbq pulled pork; corn chips; berries; green beans; asparagus; zucchini; coleslaw; cucumbers; carrots; chocolate chip cookie.  The AOC suite at FedEx field was so well catered I could have cried.  Look at all those vegetables!  And fruit.  There were even dried apricots on the cheese tray, such a nice touch.  I wish I’d seen them before I had that cookie, Iwould have been just fine flavorwise and as mentioned, I did not need any sugar today. 

Dinner:  water; honeybush tea; Amy’s veggie lasagna; sprouted wheat toast with garlic, butter and chives.  Wanted something warm and mushy.  I was so very tired.  In bed by 8:45.   Jeez louise this dinner looks horrible, doesn’t it?  Typically my food is so very pretty…

And That's the Week That Was...

*Whew* what a week.  KAB and Puppet Players met on Tuesday afternoon.  Like always, we had a good time.  I let them listen to my Glee CD (total guilty pleasure) and it was kinda hilarious to watch seven kids between the ages of 7-13 jam out to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’”  I told them that I have many friends who would be so very proud of them knowing all the words (seeing that most of my memories of that song involves friends, a bar, and some sort of girly beverage).

Thursday, my supervisor, another coworker, and myself got to go to Barnes and Noble.  All day.  It was FANTASTIC!  We were given dollys to put books on (I must have filled two of those bad boys) and got to buy pretty much whatever we wanted.  When I say ‘whatever,’ I mean within  the parameters of our collection development policy.  But omigod, I was in a state of shock/euphoria that I could purchase as much as I wanted.  They also let me let loose in the movie/TV department as well.  Our library will be the proud owner of three volumes of Animaniacs, one volume of Pinky and the Brain, one volume of Sesame Street, two volumes of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, and other various movies.  I can’t wait until the like eight boxes of stuff we brought back to the library gets processed.  Brilliant!

I think I’m pretty much done getting stuff ready for Mystery Night.  I’m nervous (like I normally am) because I do have thirty kids signed up.  I’m glad that I have two other people helping me.  They know their way around these programs better than I do (and I’m sure they’ll have some good input).

Speaking of programs, the library is also gearing up for Christmas (yes, yes, more than a month away, I am aware).  We let kindergarten and first grade classes visit both libraries to visit Santa and make crafts.  Last time I talked to my supervisor, we had over five hundred kids signed up.  We also have two nights that the public can take pictures with Santa.  Boy, I can’t wait (!)

Today, I went out to buy all of the ingredients that I’ll be needing for baking for the next month.  This weekend I’m making  vegan banana muffins for a birthday.  Since, I’m celebrating Thanksgiving twice this year, I’ll be making Pumpkin Cheesecake and Chocolate Chunk Toffee cookies.  Hopefully, I won’t make any baking fails.  *knocks on wood*  For dinner, I thought that I would treat myself to POM Cider Glazed Pork Chops, baked potato, and peas.  Yum.  The only drawback was that my smoke detector kept going off and I checked a bazillion times to see if anything was heavily smoking/on fire, but no.  Maybe maintenance will know what’s going on.  Regardless, it was a delicious meal.

Finally, I got my webcam today!  So for any of you lovely people that have gmail, skype, or something else that will work, let me know.  I won’t be so lonely down here!  I was playing around with it and figured out how to make a video and post it to Youtube.  For some reason, I thought it was going to be harder than it actually was.  Here’s what I got:

PS- Mother dearest is visiting me for my birfday!!!

Countdown to Cleveland: 38 days

pie dish

I just got two new dishes for making pies in. They’re enamel which is great because it gets really hot on the bottom so there’s less chance of getting a soggy bottom to the pie. Perfect for people like me who can’t be arsed to blind bake stuff. I got a pie dish which is 5 cm deep for apple pies and savoury pies, and a rice plate which is perfect for tarts and flans. Only £1.99 from ebay – bargain! I’ve got the feeling that lots of home baking is about to take place. Yum – a  giant mince pie!

WHEN SIZE DOESN'T MATTER

When you are in my line of work and you meet new people, three things tend to happen: there are those who will enthusiastically tell you they can’t even boil an egg (which is actually harder to do right than the poor egg gets credit for) and will proceed to swiftly change the subject. Others will just enthusiastically let you know they cook EVERYTHING from scratch and then you will be snowed under a recitation of recipes they made in the past two years.And finally, there is the trickier group, the one I lovingly call the “kitchen gadget whores”.

As proven by the multiplying of stores like Williams Sonoma and Sur la Table, people are into the most useless kitchen utensils that, like cookbooks, no doubt tend to be forgotten in drawers, waiting for the next garage sale.Do we really need a bagel cutter when a simple serrated knife will do? Or how about a banana hanger? Or a pineapple corer? Really? We are all guilty of it.
In the last twenty years, the kitchen has become the architectural core of most houses – if, on one hand, the idea makes sense and it encourages us not to only to cook but also to entertain in a more informal manner, the scales are now tipping towards over accessorizing our kitchens. So, the question I get asked most often is about the merits of Viking stoves, convection ovens, bread makers and all other kinds of cooking paraphernalia.
And then I think of my mother. The most accomplished home cook I have ever come across and no, I am not biased. Her lasagna, quails, ducks, fried zucchini blossoms, entire meals for 30 people come out of a kitchen so small and so modest that even I have sometimes trouble reconciling the plates with the tiny oven, the dismal range and the ancient equipment. It just goes to show that to make great food all you need is love – love for the raw material, for the feeling of meat and fish and dough under your fingers, love of repetition, love for the people you are cooking for – technique and knowledge will come from experimentation and yes, your convection oven will save you 10 minutes on your baking time and your Viking range will confer you social status but all you need is the willingness to spend a couple of hours entertaining yourself, maybe using a cookbook at first or a family recipe or a friend’s suggestion. There will be memorable disasters that will make the successes oh so much sweeter.

Money well spent will be the one shelled out for at least 3 good knives and basic instructions on how to use them. The rest will follow. Above all, what I realized I needed most at the onset of my cooking days, was a fearlessness of the unknown – the unknown ingredient, the unknown technique, the seemingly impossible recipe. Learning how to fillet a fish properly or how to spin sugar took some time but it was as much fun as travelling to an unknown continent.

Word Magic: Turning the Domestic into Art

I’ve learned a little trick for dealing with my negative attitudes towards certain tasks:

If an activity is unattractive, think of it as an art form.

See, here’s the deal: before I was married, I loathed the thought of performing domestic, traditional-wifey tasks. I dreaded the thought of cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, baking, childcare, et cetera: if it was “woman’s work,” I didn’t want to have to do it.  I thought that stuff was lame.  I even thought I wasn’t good at it.  I told Ben, before we were married, that I wouldn’t pack his lunches for him like his mom did. “If anything, I’ll fill one big container full of food for you and you can take that to work.  Don’t expect me to put all kinds of snacks into all kinds of baggies for you,” I said.  I could tell he was disappointed to hear this but I wanted him to be prepared. I was not a wifey kind of girl.

Things started to change when, after I was married, I found I was actually quite good at a lot of these things. I had to cook since Ben was completely useless in the kitchen; and I soon found that cooking came quite naturally to me, even though I hadn’t done much at home.  My meatloaves and casseroles always turned out beautifully.  My cheesecakes were surprisingly delightful.  I also kind of got interested in natural health, which got me thinking a lot about nutrition; that in turn led me take cooking more seriously.  And I found I liked things neat and tidy in the house, so I found myself cleaning quite regularly.  I liked for my home to be pleasantly ornamented and colour-coordinated. I liked my yard to be attractive and well-kept, and I enjoyed planting bulbs and flowers.  Oh frig: I was becoming a traditional wife.

I needed a new way to think about all this domestic stuff. I needed a way out of the unappealing identity that I was becoming entrapped inside. I hated the thought of being a traditional wife but I was doing – and enjoying! – all the stuff that traditional wives did. I was experiencing “cognitive dissonance” and I needed a way to reconcile my inner conflicts.

So I began to think of these tasks as various art forms, and myself as an artist. “Cooking” became “culinary art” or “cuisine.” My concern for interior spaces became a penchant for “interior design.” My interest in plants and shrubs became an interest in “landscaping.” You get the idea: I began to tell myself that I wasn’t a traditional wife performing obligatory duties; I was an artist seeking self-expression.  In things like cooking and decorating and gardening.

I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating here, but I honestly have begun thinking about these tasks in a new light and it has really changed the way I live my life.

My perspective on cooking changed the most radically. Before I was married, I dreaded the thought of cooking because I had always seen it as a duty that women had to perform for their families.  It was a degrading task, unfairly foisted upon women through history because they were physically weaker. Women couldn’t join in on the fun and important stuff that men got to do, like hunting and travelling and getting university degrees, so they had to stay home and cook.  Cooking was a thankless, rather mindless job.  It was primitive.  It was for boring people.  It wasn’t concerned with individuality, which was a really big deal to me at the time (I was soooo self-absorbed. Maybe I still am).  But ever since getting married and taking over the kitchen in our home, cooking has actually become one of my favourite activities.  I love it.

Cooking is an opportunity to be creative: I enjoy trying new recipes from around the world and experimenting with different exotic spices. I love inventing my own recipes based on old ones that I’ve mastered, or trying to imitate foods that I have enjoyed in restaurants.

But I also love cooking for all kinds of other reasons, too. I have decided that it’s an elemental practice that deserves respect because it helps me to get me in touch with my humanity. It connects me with other cultures and people throughout history.  When I knead bread, for example, sinking my fists deep into flour and water and oil and shaping it into loaves, I am participating in an ancient practice that has been performed by human beings since the beginning of time.  The fact that it’s primitive is beautiful to me now – it’s historical and mysterious, and a little bit magical.

I also now believe that cooking is an honourable job because it is so essential.  My cooking provide nourishment for our bodies: I provide sustenance.  I prepare the food that keeps us alive. Cooking is life-giving.

I have found that cooking is even a source of power. I choose the menus in this household. I set the schedule for our meals. I have the last say in what we put in our mouths. I get to make what I want, and Ben has very little input in this.  Furthermore, I am taking control of what we eat.  Instead of letting other people (like restaurants) decide what I consume, I take food into my own hands. Literally.

Cooking is even political.  If I think it’s morally problematic to eat animals or genetically modified foods, or to buy products from ethically-questionable providers, I make the decision to avoid those foods in favour of ethically acceptable foods. As fellow blogger Sarah puts it, I vote with my wallet, and food is a particularly important sphere.  I make choices that have political implications, and these choices are significant.

In short, cooking is artistic. It’s ancient. It’s beautiful. It’s powerful. And it’s political.

Sweet.

I’ve found that this is true for a lot of things I formerly considered lame: there is a lot more to certain activities than meets the (young, closed-minded) eye. Like gardening: I used to think it was just for grannies and other people who didn’t have productive or interesting lives (Sorry, grannies. I haven’t had very positive grandma role models).  Now I feel that gardening is a sexy hobby that helps me to get in tune with the earth and with the rhythms of nature.  It gives me an opportunity to be creative outdoors.  It takes aesthetics into account, and speaks to the human soul.  Stuff like that.  It totally rocks.

I think it’s helpful to think about these tasks in this new light.  It has allowed me to explore all kinds of new realms of life that I wouldn’t have considered before I was married. I’m even starting to think that mothering seems pretty awesome.  I have learned that just because something is “domestic” and has been traditionally practiced by women it is not necessarily tedious or pathetic.  Women have actually engaged with glorious, meaningful crafts, and I should be proud to participate in them.

This is not to say that cooking, cleaning, gardening, et cetera are only for women, or that women must perform them; I’m just saying that a lot of these things that have traditionally been done by women are actually pretty awesome and that jerks like me should reevaluate them from a more open-minded perspective if we find ourselves being prejudiced against them.

What do you think?

this day off

My internet broke. It took them almost two days to figure out that they had the wiring backwards…just for us and no one else. Drew blames trickster gods. It was the day he decided to try to quit smoking.

I made soup with bacon, potato, beer, cheddar cheese and green beans for dinner with pumpkin pie.  Also strawberry jam for with breakfast tomorrow. I need a 9 in spring form pan before I can make my cheesecake.

I did the rest of what needed to  be done. Clean, wash, fold, mop, drink, smoke.

I listened to music the rest of the day. I had intended to get at my record player but that didn’t happen.

Toe is still wrapped up. Ached mostly since this morning.

I’ve been sending all of my text messages to Drew in German and I think it is starting to bother him.

Tasty Tuesday: Pumpkin Cheesecake

The perfect dessert for fall. So much better than plain cheesecake or plain pumpkin pie. And super easy to make.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

16 oz Cream cheese; softened
16 oz Pumpkin puree
5 Eggs
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup Frangelico liqueur (optional)
3/4 tsp Cinnamon, ground
1/2 tsp Ginger, ground
1/4 tsp Nutmeg, ground
1/8 tsp Cloves, ground
1 tsp Vanilla extract

Beat everything together. Pour into graham cracker pie crust. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-50 minutes.

Flash Roasted Fish - Keep It Simple

If there’s one cardinal rule when cooking fish, it’s that simple is best. Let the flavour of the fish do the talking, and you can’t go wrong. Flash roasting is easy, and has an extra bonus – it’s quick. Keep the heat high, so the fish doesn’t lose moisture, and you can have a fantastic dish ready in ten minutes.

Flash Roasted Fish with Pesto

Use boneless fillets of your favourite fish. Terakihi works well, salmon too.

You can use shop-bought pesto, but here’s how to make your own:

25 fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup virgin olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts
pinch of salt
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup freshly grated Romano cheese

Blitz up the first four ingredients in a food processor, add the cheeses and process briefly again. You’re done.

Pre-heat the oven to 250C  (480F). Place the fish fillets on a lightly oiled baking tray or dish, folding under any thin edges. Spread with the pesto and put the tray in the oven for 5-8 minutes. When done the fish should resist slightly when pressed (check after 5 mins). That’s all.

Grilled tomatoes are the perfect complement, plus your choice of vegetables.

The incredibly sorry saga of the Roasted Garlic Peppercorn Sauce

It was my night to cook. That’s usually not a cause concern, but tonight would be different.

My wife, a marvelous, adventurous cook who can improvise in the kitchen the way Don Rickles can on stage, was working late. So being the gracious husband I am, I said I’d make dinner. I’m no Iron Chef, but I can get by, especially with gentle, loving guidance and a well-tested recipe.

I was in the mood for pasta tonight. No problem. No one can screw up pasta. No one.

The only reason I wanted to make pasta was the baguette I had purchased. It’s perfect for garlic bread. Maybe structuring the entire meal around a tall, skinny loaf of gluten isn’t such a great idea, but I was going to run with it.

Because I was told we didn’t have any pasta sauce in the pantry, I was using company time to research easy and flavorful cream sauce recipes on cooking Web sites. I found one I thought I could handle, which would also stretch my culinary chops, so to speak: Roasted Garlic Peppercorn Sauce. Rated 4 stars out of 5 by users of the site. “Fast, easy and delicious,” raved workingmom49 of Schenectady. No one can screw up this sauce. No one.

First, cut the tops off two cloves of garlic, drizzle them in olive oil and roast them at 325 degrees for 45 minutes. So far, so good. Flash forward to taking the garlic out of the oven. Maybe I left them in for a few minutes too long or maybe our oven bakes a little too hot, but there were certainly usable. Onward to the much-awaited cream sauce.

The recipe calls for a standard butter, flour, milk mixture. Let that come to a boil. It looked a little thin, but it’ll thicken. Just follow the recipe.

Time for the garlic bread. One of my favorite foods in the entire universe. Baguette split, butter melted, garlic minced, bread buttered, spices spread and into the oven. Bake it for a few minutes, then a moment of browning under the broiler. I’ve done this before. No one can screw up garlic bread. No one.

For the sauce, I’m supposed to crush a tablespoon of peppercorns. After several minutes of looking in every drawer in the kitchen and finding every single kitchen implement conceivable EXCEPT a mortar and pestle (Why do we have three peelers? How many melon ballers does one family really need?), I decided to use the back of a large spoon. It was supposed to produce the same result, except now the peppercorns shoot out from underneath the spoon at warp speed if I hold the spoon slightly askew. Within a few moments, the countertop looks like an accident site at a ball bearing factory. Peppercorns are flying thick and fast.

Time to start the bowtie pasta. Bowties, the cutest of all the pasta shapes.

Unfortunately, the sauce isn’t quite thickening up. Maybe a little higher heat. I mean, I’m following the recipe exactly. I added the roasted garlic, now smashed under my peppercorn-encrusted spoon, and let the flavors meld. A little taste should give me direction on seasoning. Now, I’m sure all of us had tasted library paste at some time. The library paste at my grade school was a Dom Perignon ’53 compared to the witches brew I had going. After adding salt and the peppercorns, it tasted like library paste with salt and peppercorns. Actual library paste would have been an improvement.

OH CRAP, THE GARLIC BREAD.

When I opened the oven door there was a cloud of smoke thick enough to show up on weather radar. I grabbed the pan and ran it to the back porch to vent the house. I let it sit on the patio table, where it would hopefully decay into chunks of carbon thick enough to form charcoal briquettes. Oh well, another good baguette down the epicurean toilet. Then the smoke detector went off…… on the second floor. Several minutes of waving a large bath towel to freshen the air around the smoke detector finally quieted the ear-splitting, seizure-inducing whine of the smoke detector’s piercing, wake-the-dead scream.

This is when I see the pasta boiling over. The bowties have come unknotted and are as unkempt as a drunken high school senior the morning after prom. They’ve gone from cute little pasta bowties to glutinous little ragged rectangles of death.

Let’s review. Bread: ruined. Sauce: ruined. Pasta: ruined. I’ve hit the trifecta. We went out for Mexican food. They didn’t ruin anything.

I think I’m going to burn that recipe. It shouldn’t be hard. No one can screw that up. No one.

P.S. One final indignity: there was pasta sauce in the pantry all along.

Garden! Whee....

Tristan and I finally got around to mowing and whippersnippering the backyard. Our lawn is infested with Kykuyu grass so it grows FAST. Which means it often gets the better of us and parts of the garden get cut off from access due to the jungle-like growth underfoot. We really need a goat or something but our place is a rental so I’m thinking… no.

Anyway, here’s what it looks like now!

It looked like it was about half the size before. My cats don’t know what to do with all the space. They seemed a little freaked out to be honest. Poor little pumpkins. This photo was taken standing about 1/3rd of the way into the garden so its actually bigger than this. You can’t see but along the fenceline on the left is where our veggie garden is. This merely serves as a reminder of how LITTLE space we actually use for gardening. Sigh.

Our potato patch… it looked bigger before we cut all the grass around it. We’ve finally succumbed and put out buckets, pots etc up off the ground – we kept losing them inamongst the grass. I forgot how MANY pots we had!

Some seedlings can you name them all? Going clockwise from the top right there’s carrots, basil, amaranth, at the bottom right there’s a mystery citrus and the bottom left is another mystery seedling. Looking forward to finding out what they are! Its been sprinkling rain all night so the soil looks lovely, eh. Not the usual Masc0t Sand. haha

Mr Sunflower No.2 is ready to pop! So excited about this, I’ve never grown sunflowers before! Still not convinced that it actually *is* a sunflower but at this stage there’s probably no other possibility. They’ve started bending to follow the sun which is adorable. I’m anthropomorphising plants. Its ridiculous.

And finally my pond. Waterchestnuts and Pondweed. I need to learn more about pond stuff… this is probably a little bit of this house that I can take with me when I leave this city. Sigh.

In other exciting news… I came across this youtube vid about a family that is pretty much doing what I want to do one day… except on a LOT less land. But I guess that just shows that you only need so much space to become self-sufficient. A FIFTH of an acre! Fancy that.

Have a good day everyone! I have my parents coming to visit tonight and we have some exciting news to share with them… I hope it goes down ok. Eeep!

dear patience: i hate you

I never paint my nails in the house.

It’s not because I don’t want to. It’s just…

I’m not allowed to anymore because the last time I got nail polish on the bed…and on Tim’s shirt my shirt (his t-shirts…THE BEST. And I steal them)…on the counter…on the bathtub.  Hell if I know how any of that happened…same as I said to Tim when he was all, “THE HELL, WOMAN? Why is there a pink heart-shaped splotch on my sink?!”

I refuse to cut paper if a straight line is required.

I don’t like to wait for anything to pre-heat. I just throw it in there all, “it’ll cook eventually.”

Same goes with things “cooling off.”

Which results in disasters like this:

And “this” was a lemon cake that was supposed to probably be like…three inches higher and all in one piece. The top layer isn’t even attached in some places. 

My first mistake was tinkering with the recipe. TWO eggs? We don’t need all that extra cholesterol, hell, let’s try one egg plus lots of applesauce. Oil? Nah. More applesauce. Then, while it was busy doing its baking thing, I opened the oven around 50 times to check its progress and poked it about 300 times with a toothpick.  Once I decided it was done baking…

Let me stop right there…and answer the question I’m sure you’ll ask yourself: Why didn’t she use a timer? Yah…well, we do actually have one. I’m just not allowed to use that, either. Last time I tried to time something on the oven timer thingy, I managed to explode the circuit for the entire left side of the house. Ok, so maybe it didn’t explode exactly, but I had to sit in the dark with no TV or internet until Tim came home.  And the whole “look at the clock when you put it in the oven” is lost to me. I mean, sure, I’ll look.

But will I remember?

No. I won’t.

I’ll forget I was even cooking until Tim races into the kitchen and is all, “Why in the hell is there smoke coming from the oven?”  True story.

So, anyway, back to my cake: When I took it out of the oven, I carried it immediately to the counter and flipped the bundt pan thing right over onto a wire rack. I then proceeded to beat the bottom of the pan with oven mits, hoping that would help it come out all nice and pretty, like on the box.

It didn’t.

I was pissed all, “THE HELL, CAKE? You’re supposed to COME OUT IN ONE PIECE AND STAY TOGETHER.”

Then I read the directions: “Allow to cool at least 15 minutes”

Well, fuckitty fuck fuck.

Someone needs to invent directions for us non-patient people.

Something like: “Allow to cool at least 15 minutes before even considering flipping the pan over, dumbass. Did you hear me? I said FIFTEEN MINUTES, DUMBASS.”

Then, I might actually pay attention.

Instead, I get distracted admiring the pretty picture on the front of the box all, “It’s going to look like THAT? Really? Even though I don’t have chocolate shavings or a unicorn shaped pan? Awesome.”

Anyway, lemon rock cake is what I should have called it. Last night, after Tim took a bite of my failed attempt at dessert, I was all, “So, what do you think? You like it, right?”

He looked at me, bewildered, “What flavor is this, again?

Me: Vanilla. Well, vanilla and lemon….actually, it’s vanilla, lemon and apple.

Tim: That…tastes about right.

Me: So, you like it, right?

Tim: mmmmm…so…good…and…dense”

Me: I thought you liked dense cake?

Tim: “Yah….sure do…”

He really shouldn’t try to pull one over on me. I can see through the bullshit like I can a damn glass window.

(Actually, come to think of it, aren’t all windows are made of glass…or that clear plastic stuff like on airplanes?…an example on why proof-reading is kind of important)

Back to the rock cake: Tim’s eyes were screaming all, “This. Is. Revolting. I’m totally going to regurgitate the contents of my stomach after you fall asleep.”

Don’t think I didn’t hear the toilet in the guest bathroom flush about fifty times in succession.

Oh, and remember this one?

Why do I continue to torture myself?

What's for dinner? Caribbean Black Beans and Memories

Tonight I decided to go with something easy. Fortunately – and just by luck – I happened upon a dish that brought back fond memories of my favorite restaurant when I was living in Nashville, TN, as a graduate student on a small budget: The Calypso Cafe.

The Calypso was healthy, delicious, and, more to the point, it was cheap. They specialized in black bean dishes, sweet potatoes, some sort of kale side dish, coconut cornbread muffins, rice, and rotisserie chicken.

I remember taking my parents and my sister there, pretty sure they were going to hate it. If not for the food, then for the atmosphere, where 9 times out of 10, you’d end up listening to Bob Marley! Despite the obvious similarities between the two, my folks prefer Willie! Regardless….

My dad, the one I had pegged as the true skeptic, loved it. In fact, on every follow-up visit, when I asked where they wanted to go, he’d say, “Is that little place over by the Parthenon still open? You know, the one with the black beans?”

I haven’t been to the Calypso in years; I left Nashville in 1999.

But, fortunately – for my culinary enjoyment – I have the chance to go back this coming January.

Until then, however, I’ll have to stick with Moosewood rendition of Caribbean Black Beans. Given that I just so happen to be well stocked on kale, rice, cooked yams, and coconut, it shouldn’t be that much of a hardship!

If you ever get over Nashville way, check them out! I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised! My dad certainly was and having grown up on chocolate gravy (or so the legend goes) and fried catfish it was a bit of a stretch!

Marmalade Muffins

Brunch is always nice to have during the winter months and there is nothing better than nice warm marmalade muffins, the ultimate feel good food and Paddington bear’s favourite treat.

What you need:

250g self raising flour , 150g wholemeal flour, 1 tsp baking powder , a grind of salt , 1  egg, 250ml milk , 1/2 squeezed orange juice, 75g melted butter , 150g thick-cut marmalade.

Preheat the oven at 220c.

First in one bowl with the melted butter, add the egg and orange juice. Whisk until light and frothy. In a second bowl add the flours and baking powder, sieved. Make a well in the middle and add your egg mixture. Beat together until thoroughly combined. Then stir in the marmalade until broken up but make sure it is still streaky and looks like a marble effect. Spoon in to muffin cases and bake for 20mins, or until light brown. This recipe should made 12 muffins.

Perfect for brunch or a nice snack.

Fruit Leather

I seriously found a new favorite thing to do with overripe fruit! Well, a new favorite thing to do when you have a LOT of overripe fruit.

I love this stuff for a quick fruit serving and energy boost -

so why not make my own?

It was really simple too, though it took a long time to dehydrate the fruit.

The first thing I did was make a big pot of applesauce up (based on my applesauce recipe I posted  last week) and let it boil down a LITTLE bit, but not turn into apple butter.

Then I added a little more than half a quart of frozen cherries we still had in the freezer, after thawing them and chopping them up in the food processor.  It was more for color than anything. Definitely could have done this JUST with apples though.

I had a bit of honey in the house, and I thought I would try to use it in there, but I ran out and still wanted more sugar.  I put in 1/2 a cup more of plain cane sugar, and when I had finished making the leather, I thought it could have used even more.  I used a LOT of apples though.  Just make sure you’re happy with the amount of sugar before you start drying.

After the apple/cherry sauce was made I lined two cookie sheets with parchment paper and greased it with some of my homemade butter.  Then I poured in sauce till I had a sheet of fruit liquid that was about 1/8 of an inch thick, spreading it out with a spatula.

I placed them in the oven at 170F (the lowest my oven goes) and left them in there overnight.  The next morning, I was too afraid to leave the oven on again all day, so I turned it off, but when I got home, I put it back on for another couple of hours.  When it was hard enough in the middle that my finger didn’t indent, but was easily peeled off the parchment paper, it was done!  I sliced it up in strips with a pizza cutter and rolled them like fruit tape.

The edges were a bit crispy (because they were thinner) but the fruit leather probably could have cooked for a few hours longer since there’s a lot of condensation in the bag I’m keeping the fruit leather in.

Still, it tastes JUST like store-bought fruit leather!  I just take a “roll” with me to work for a quick snack and bask in how easy it was to make!

Tea Moments — Remembering a Thanksgiving Past

by A.C. Cargill

The holiday season is fast approaching, starting with Thanksgiving, a time of year that fills people with memories both good and bad. For me, Thanksgiving is always a bit harrowing, since cooking and entertaining has never been my forté. As I sip my tea, a particular memory comes to mind.

Early in our marriage, hubby and I, in a moment of madness that still haunts our nightmares, decided to host a — gasp! — family Thanksgiving feast. After all, I had hosted a tea party or two. What could be so hard about Thanksgiving? (I know, spoken like a true family holiday neophyte.)

Making tea is pretty straightforward and doesn’t require the prowess in the kitchen of Julia Child or Graham Kerr. I’m usually able to handle the tasks of heating water to the right temperature, pre-warming the teapot, adding the tea leaves, and allowing the tea to infuse to just the right taste. Even serving up finger sandwiches, trifles, and other treats was pretty much within my realm of capability.

Cooking, however, has always been a bit of a challenge for me.

First, there are the measurements: teaspoons versus tablespoons, how many ounces are in a half-gallon, liters versus quarts, etc. Then, there are recipe instructions that might as well be written in Greek, such as “separate two eggs” (what, set one on one side and the other on the other side?) and “cut in shortening,” or downright cruel (“whip the cream” and “beat the eggs” — sorry, old jokes!). Recipes also seem to call frequently for a teaspoon or two of some ingredient I don’t have (lemon zest, Worcestershire sauce, cream of tartar, etc.). Worst of all, the neatnik in me gets agitated when, during the process of sifting flour, more of it ends up as a cloud in the air, on the countertop, or in my hair. I also tend to try to clean as I go — or, if hubby is cooking (which he often does), I clean as he goes, grabbing mixing bowls out of his hands as soon as he has dumped the contents into the skillet, baking pan, etc.

All of this makes for less than ideal conditions for cooking a Thanksgiving feast.

Throw into the mix the fact that we were living at an elevation of 5,000+ feet (meaning that we needed to turn up the oven temperature, which we didn’t), that my new in-laws were watching with great amusement everything hubby and I did, and that we were trying to follow instructions on Martha Stewart’s Thanksgiving show about how to cook the perfect turkey (which was still a bit frozen inside) — all in what we laughingly called our kitchen (one that would make a galley-style kitchen look huge by comparison).

There was one good thing. We had decided to keep the menu simple. Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes (made fresh from Yukon Golds), gravy, tomato aspic, crescent rolls, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce. (The last two items are mandated by the Thanksgiving Menu Bureau of the USFDA — honest!) Oh, yeah, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream and a large pot of Ceylon tea.

Thank goodness YouTube wasn’t around then. If there ever was a video that would have had people laughing, covering their eyes, or cringing as they watched, it would have been a video of hubby and me that day. All in all, I must say that my in-laws were quite kind. A few half-concealed chuckles, an amused twinkle in the eye, and only a couple of outright guffaws — not bad considering that the meal was served two hours late because of our error in adjusting the oven temperature to account for the slower cooking times at high elevations. Of course, we had to reheat the potatoes, and zap the green bean casserole in the microwave to uncongeal the cream of mushroom soup in it.

The tea, however, was perfect!

This year, I think we’ll let someone else host. I’ll be glad to bring the pumpkin pie and brew the pot of tea. Enjoy!

Check out A.C.’s blog, Tea Time with A.C. Cargill, for more entertainment!

Super-Easy Beer Bread Recipe

1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle beer  (I use Newcastle Stout Ale)
3 cups self-rising flour
3 tablespoons white sugar

Directions

In a large bowl, mix together the sugar and flour. Add beer and continue to mix, first using a wooden spoon, then your hands. Batter will be sticky. Pour into a 9 x 5 inch greased loaf pan.

Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees ) for 50 for 60 minutes. The top will be crunchy, and the insides will be soft. Serve topped with butter or cheese spread.

Vegetarian Vegetable Baked Potato Soup

Just like my other (more traditional) baked potato soup recipe, this soup is a great, filling way to warm up from the cold.  Its very thick, like a cross between a soup and a stew.

Vegetarian Vegetable Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients:

• 3 cups/4 dl water
• 1 vegetable bouillon cube
• 1 cup/ dl milk
• 2 cups/ 3 dl sour cream
• 3 large-8 small (use judgement) potatoes
• a small bouquet of broccoli
• a large onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• a handful of fresh grated parmesan cheese
• salt, pepper, chili pepper flakes to taste

Cook:

1. Chop all veggies.
2. Boil water, add bouillon cube and potatoes.  Cook 10 minutes.
3. Add remaining veggies.  Cook 10 minutes or to desired softness.
4. Add milk,  sour cream and seasoning.  Stir until back to temperature.
5. Stir in parmesan cheese.  Serve when all vegetables are to desired softness.

If you use low-fat sour cream and skim milk it’s actually quite healthy.  And delicious.

-Ariel

Of lime juice, oranges and chocolate

The Key lime pots de creme from earlier this week led me to try to find a source of real Key lime juice.  Searching the internet yielded the site for Nellie and Joe’s, but shipping to Canada was prohibitive.  I was lamenting to my sister, who is a very resourceful person (and also lives on the other side of the border).  Marilyn volunteered to check her local gourmet store, but found that they didn’t have Key lime juice. 

Often difficulties become challenges for me, so I went back to the Nellie and Joe’s site, but this time searched retailers.  Amazingly, the little, independent grocery store in the country two miles from my sister carries Nellie and Joe’s.  My sister zipped down the next day, and bought me four bottles – enough for eight pies or thirty-two pots de creme.  If the Canadian border authorities don’t create a problem, I will have a stash for many months.

After making the pots de creme, a vague memory of making oranges filled with a Grand Marnier orange mousse came to me.  I hadn’t made them for decades, but remember them being lovely.  This motivated me to search the house for my old recipe folder.  Two days of searching yielded nothing but frustration, and I began to question whether it had been thrown out along with many of my cookbooks and utensils.  However, last night I looked in one last place, and was thrilled to find it.  In reading through, it was a chronicle of more than forty years of food fashions.  One of the recipes is for a fruit ice that came from my grandmother, so it is at least a hundred years old.  In the clippings, I found “Instructions for Julia’s chocolate decorations” written on the back of an envelope.  These recipes will be the subject of many future blogs.

Before I found the binder, with the help of the net, I located Julia’s recipe for Mousse a L’Orange that must come from the second volume of Mastering…

Mousse a L’Orange (a frozen dessert)

“A becoming way to serve this delicate mousse is in the scooped-out halves of oranges”

Ingredients

• 3 Tb orange liqueur
• 3 or 4 bright-skinned oranges
• 1/2 lemon
• Orange juice
• 6 egg yolks
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 6 egg whites
• Pinch of salt
• 1 Tb granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup chilled whipping cream
• 6 orange-shell cups, or dessert cups, or a serving bowl
• Decorations:  Glazed orange peel, angelica cut into leaf shapes, mint leaves, or whipped cream

Directions

Pour the liqueur into the measuring cup.  Grate the colored part of the skins of 3 oranges and the 1/2 lemon into the cup.  Strain in enough orange juice so liquid measure 2 cups.  Beat the egg yolks and sugar in a mixing bowl until mixture is pale yellow and forms a ribbon.  Beat in the cornstarch and the orange juice mixture.  Pour into the saucepan and stir over moderate heat with wooden spoon until mixture heats through and thickens, but does not come to the simmer, or a temperature of more than 170 degrees.  It should coat the spoon lightly.  Remove from heat and beat a moment to stop the cooking.

Beat the egg whites and salt in a separate bowl until soft peaks are formed; sprinkle in the sugar and beat until stiff peaks are formed.  Fold the egg whites into the hot orange mixture, and fold over the bowl of ice until thoroughly chilled so the custard will not separate.

Beat the cream until stiff, and fold into the chilled mousse.  Turn into orange-shell cups, dessert cups, or bowl.  Cover and freeze for several hours or overnight.  Decorate the dessert just before serving.

Notes

Equipment

A 1-qt. measuring cup

A 3-qt. mixing bowl

Wire whip or electric beater

Wooden spoon

Optional:  candy thermometer

Bowl with a tray of ice cubes and water to cover them

A 2 1/2 qt., heavy-bottomed enameled saucepan

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My recipe from the binder is much simpler, but delicious as I recall.  The recipe is handwritten, so I have no idea where it came from.

Oranges Grand Marnier

6 egg yolks

3/4 c. sugar

2 3/4 c. shipped cream (1 c. unwhipped)

3 oz. Grand Marnier

8 orange shells

Slice tops off oranges, and scoop out pulp.  Combine beaten yolks and sugar until stiff.  Fold 2 c. of whipped cream into yolk mixture, then fold in Grand Marnier.  Fill shells and freeze at least 2 hours.  before serving top with remaining whipped cream, and set each orange top on each orange at an angle.  Garnish with a spring of mint.

————————————————————————————-

I had begun thinking about oranges and chocolate earlier in the week remembering a wonderful chocolate-orange cheesecake I used to make, and that I will probably take to a Christmas pot-luck dinner.  I think it would be fun to try filling the oranges with a chocolate-orange mousse, and garnishing perhaps with an After-Eight orange-chocolate stick, or chocolate curls.  The recipe for the chocolate-orange cheesecake will be in the next post.

Nancy