I don't know about you, but I've been doing a lot of food reading lately, possibly because I am fantasizing about cooking real meals again. Between toddler wrangling and being chronically ill, I just haven't had the time or the energy to devote to actual food, so I'm living vicariously through cookbooks, The Splendid Table, and just reading about food.
An example: I read The Saffron Kitchen, and, in looking for a little more information on the book and the author, I stumbled on My Saffron Kitchen, a blog on Indian food (yum!) and I even discovered there's a local caterer called Saffron Kitchen, though I'm not a huge pie eater - savory or sweet - so I simply found that an interesting aside. But worlds of reading and food collide in other unexpected ways, too. I've also been spending a lot of this summer reading Mark Twain. Btw, I wish I could say re-reading but in most instances, that is not the case. So then my ears perked up when I heard about Andrew Beahrs' book, which discusses Mark Twain as a locovore. Added it to my wish list.
You been reading anything lately that's food-related?
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
Need some inspiration
It's like a broken record. Been sick again lately, haven't cooked much of anything. In weeks. On a positive note, our grocery bill is down when the only eaters are one adult and a baby!
Now that I'm (mostly, hopefully) feeling better (again), it's time for me to relieve Michael of all the cooking duties he's taken over lately. Not that he doesn't enjoy it, but, y'know, just to give him a break so he can get to all the stuff I can't do around the house - man stuff. But I'm just not feeling inspired with cooking. We've started getting in to the habit of feeding Millie less baby food and more 'real' food - tiny portions and tastes of what we're having. But I'm just uninspired. Whatever we make, we have to take into consideration that the stuff she can eat has to be pretty simple - we want her to be able to taste the ingredient(s) / flavors and not alot of seasoning (and definitely no spice). It's gotta be relatively healthy, too, so we'll eat it...and I figure we can season our own portions separately (and add some heat, too).
We have a terrific baby cookbook, Karin Knight's The Best Homemade Baby Food on the Planet, but we've pretty much gotten all the miles we can out of it until she turns a year, and we're tired of running through her tried and true favorites - it's repetitive for us, so it's gotta be for her. So if you have any inspiring websites that do simple recipes, or if you have any recipes you want to share, that would be awesome. If it helps, her all-time top foods are:
Now that I'm (mostly, hopefully) feeling better (again), it's time for me to relieve Michael of all the cooking duties he's taken over lately. Not that he doesn't enjoy it, but, y'know, just to give him a break so he can get to all the stuff I can't do around the house - man stuff. But I'm just not feeling inspired with cooking. We've started getting in to the habit of feeding Millie less baby food and more 'real' food - tiny portions and tastes of what we're having. But I'm just uninspired. Whatever we make, we have to take into consideration that the stuff she can eat has to be pretty simple - we want her to be able to taste the ingredient(s) / flavors and not alot of seasoning (and definitely no spice). It's gotta be relatively healthy, too, so we'll eat it...and I figure we can season our own portions separately (and add some heat, too).
We have a terrific baby cookbook, Karin Knight's The Best Homemade Baby Food on the Planet, but we've pretty much gotten all the miles we can out of it until she turns a year, and we're tired of running through her tried and true favorites - it's repetitive for us, so it's gotta be for her. So if you have any inspiring websites that do simple recipes, or if you have any recipes you want to share, that would be awesome. If it helps, her all-time top foods are:
- squash (any and all varieites)
- almost any fruit - blueberries, pears, peaches, apples. She just hasn't liked mango (!)
- chicken
- avocado
- ground turkey
- sweet potato
- bland dairy (cottage cheese, plain yogurt, or some colby, for example)
She eats a few other things - carrots, green beans, peas, York Peppermint patty - just not as reliably. (And pasta / wheat is out). Part of our challenge is a short-lived one - once she's one, she can eat some additional things, like milk. And maybe she'll even have a tooth or two by then to tackle things that require teeth to tear apart. In the meantime we have come up with, I think, pretty much every combo of everything she eats that is mathematically possible - chicken & cheese 'meat'balls, avocado & ground turkey 'burritos', yogurt parfaits w/ fruit...So if you have thoughts or think of anything, let me know!
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Goldilocks & The Chicken Curry
So, as you know, I am sick.
Again. For, I swear, the tenth month straight. I guess that's what 9 months straight without a single full night of sleep...and a baby in daycare will do to you.
So this week, I have hardly been eating, nevermind cooking anything. But I watched Michael forage for dinner tonight, grazing on this and that, and it struck me that that pretty much sums up how we've been cooking recently. We tend to have a lot of remnants of things. It seems like we cook a big dish and then one or the both of us get sick so it takes forever to polish off the leftovers. And then, of course, I know this is breaking news, but Millie doesn't eat a huge amount, so it's up to us to clean her plate.
Our fridge right now is the perfect expression of that: A Lot of Just a Little Left. There's the array of slightly nibbled fruits and veggies from Millie's meals. It's like Goldilocks comes over and takes a tiny bite out of everything & leaves the rest. She grazes on a wide variety of fruits & veggies (and a little chicken & dairy these days), but, obviously, doesn't finish a whole anything. Often we'll just make a big batch of something for her - steamed pears, butternut squash, blueberries, peas - and then freeze the rest. But when you've got half of one apple, two thirds of one banana, and, the most problematic, half an avocado, it's usually use or lose that night. Tonight, Michael had the remaining half of her avocado on top of scrambled eggs with salsa & toast. The only thing in our fridge besides half of every fruit and veggie from acorn squash through zucchini is an almost-gone thing of chicken curry I'd made last weekend. (And, especially since I've not been eating much the past couple of days, Michael's sick of having to bear the brunt of that).
I have been on a months-long quest to find a great chicken curry slow cooker recipe. I think the slow cooker has got to be the perfect vehicle, giving it time to develop flavor while not requiring me to babysit. But, sadly, I have yet to find one that meets my expectations. I've tried all four of the recipes in ATK's Slow Cooker Revolution, one of them at least twice, and so far, I still haven't found one that's just right. Some produced a very strange texture to the curry - sort of grainy, I guess? (Which I attribute to the tapioca they request that you add, and I recall thinking, "Alright. This is weird. But who knows? Maybe it works!" Nope.) One was downright watery. Now I'm no expert, but I'm gonna go ahead and wager that's a result of the 2 cups of water they request that you dump in the slow cooker with everything else. Anyone ready for some watered down chicken stew with a hint of curry in the background? And I mean, way, WAY in the background?
I swear, some of ATK's recipes are clever, useful, and reliable. But others? I want to take them by the ears and shake them, demanding "Did you even TASTE this? Or do you suffer from some taste-bud DEFECT?" I mean, seriously, what is their deal? Are there some exceptional rules of kitchen physics that work only in their special test kitchen and nowhere else?
It's not like I don't know what I want out of my chicken curry. I want Michael's consistently flavorful, slightly spicy chicken curry...just from a slow cooker. And one of the things that I thought was wrong with ATK's versions was that they, without exception, rely on curry powder and not curry paste. So when I stumbled on a slow cooker chicken curry recipe in a Woman's Day that used curry paste and didn't ask you to add weird sh*t like tapioca and water?
I'll wait while you formulate your guess as to what happened.
Disappointing. So, yeah, I'm still searching for that great chicken curry slow cooker recipe. And til I find it, I guess we're stuck trying to chew through 3-4 quart leftovers of 'not it' chicken curry.
P.S. - I can hear you judging. No, I don't subscribe to or read Woman's Day. I found that in the condo my 'rents stayed in over the holidays and, after flipping through it, I tore the recipes out. And since I don't have a real recipe this week, I'll leave you with this handy list of cooking tips from Cooking Light.
Again. For, I swear, the tenth month straight. I guess that's what 9 months straight without a single full night of sleep...and a baby in daycare will do to you.
So this week, I have hardly been eating, nevermind cooking anything. But I watched Michael forage for dinner tonight, grazing on this and that, and it struck me that that pretty much sums up how we've been cooking recently. We tend to have a lot of remnants of things. It seems like we cook a big dish and then one or the both of us get sick so it takes forever to polish off the leftovers. And then, of course, I know this is breaking news, but Millie doesn't eat a huge amount, so it's up to us to clean her plate.
Our fridge right now is the perfect expression of that: A Lot of Just a Little Left. There's the array of slightly nibbled fruits and veggies from Millie's meals. It's like Goldilocks comes over and takes a tiny bite out of everything & leaves the rest. She grazes on a wide variety of fruits & veggies (and a little chicken & dairy these days), but, obviously, doesn't finish a whole anything. Often we'll just make a big batch of something for her - steamed pears, butternut squash, blueberries, peas - and then freeze the rest. But when you've got half of one apple, two thirds of one banana, and, the most problematic, half an avocado, it's usually use or lose that night. Tonight, Michael had the remaining half of her avocado on top of scrambled eggs with salsa & toast. The only thing in our fridge besides half of every fruit and veggie from acorn squash through zucchini is an almost-gone thing of chicken curry I'd made last weekend. (And, especially since I've not been eating much the past couple of days, Michael's sick of having to bear the brunt of that).
I have been on a months-long quest to find a great chicken curry slow cooker recipe. I think the slow cooker has got to be the perfect vehicle, giving it time to develop flavor while not requiring me to babysit. But, sadly, I have yet to find one that meets my expectations. I've tried all four of the recipes in ATK's Slow Cooker Revolution, one of them at least twice, and so far, I still haven't found one that's just right. Some produced a very strange texture to the curry - sort of grainy, I guess? (Which I attribute to the tapioca they request that you add, and I recall thinking, "Alright. This is weird. But who knows? Maybe it works!" Nope.) One was downright watery. Now I'm no expert, but I'm gonna go ahead and wager that's a result of the 2 cups of water they request that you dump in the slow cooker with everything else. Anyone ready for some watered down chicken stew with a hint of curry in the background? And I mean, way, WAY in the background?
I swear, some of ATK's recipes are clever, useful, and reliable. But others? I want to take them by the ears and shake them, demanding "Did you even TASTE this? Or do you suffer from some taste-bud DEFECT?" I mean, seriously, what is their deal? Are there some exceptional rules of kitchen physics that work only in their special test kitchen and nowhere else?
It's not like I don't know what I want out of my chicken curry. I want Michael's consistently flavorful, slightly spicy chicken curry...just from a slow cooker. And one of the things that I thought was wrong with ATK's versions was that they, without exception, rely on curry powder and not curry paste. So when I stumbled on a slow cooker chicken curry recipe in a Woman's Day that used curry paste and didn't ask you to add weird sh*t like tapioca and water?
I'll wait while you formulate your guess as to what happened.
Disappointing. So, yeah, I'm still searching for that great chicken curry slow cooker recipe. And til I find it, I guess we're stuck trying to chew through 3-4 quart leftovers of 'not it' chicken curry.
P.S. - I can hear you judging. No, I don't subscribe to or read Woman's Day. I found that in the condo my 'rents stayed in over the holidays and, after flipping through it, I tore the recipes out. And since I don't have a real recipe this week, I'll leave you with this handy list of cooking tips from Cooking Light.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
On Job Change and Spaghetti Sauce
You and I must be on the same wavelength. Let's see...dreams of physical anthropology planned and dashed? Check. Museum career? Check. Current job as a trainer? Check. Philosophically waxing about 'dream job?' Check. I think I can confidently say that our friendship was meant to be. :)
I have been thinking about my career change too. While mine was less forced than yours -- we made the choice to move to Salt Lake City -- it did feel forced in a way. There were no jobs to be had in museums here, save for a gift shop attendant. I was also looking forward to something that gave me a better work-life balance and something that didn't feel like moving mountain on a day to day basis. I have now ended up as a trainer teaching soft-skills -- I teach the kind of management skills that I can confidently say did not exist in any of the museums I have worked in. And yet, ending or shortening my museum career has been disappointing for me too. I actually wrote in my journal this week about how working in a museum defined my identity for 10 years, and who am I without that? I think it was the hope and dream of working in a museum that defined my identity, not the actual work. Because, lord, teaching inaccurate history and booking port-o-potties surely did not mean that much.
I find myself day dreaming about what my next step will be. I'm getting to the age where that should probably include a baby...but I find myself day dreaming more about cooking, or reading, or going back to school (gasp!). I think that I have a long career ahead of me...and do I want to spend the coming years doing what I'm doing now? And if the answer is no, then how do I make that happen? My job now requires me to read all sort of pseudo self-help articles and books -- how to change your habits, how to be more efficient, how to have crucial conversations -- and yet I find myself unable to execute even a plan for whatever my next step is.
You took the strengths-finder test, right? I've been thinking A LOT about my strengths, and how what I'm doing or what I could be doing will maximize those strengths. My strengths are:
Learner
Responsibility
Connectedness
Context
Adaptability
So...what that means for me is: I love learning, absorbing material, but I also feel a responsibility to do something about it. I'm also really good at following through on what I said I would do. I think this has illuminated why I didn't feel like I was a "good" curator -- I like to move on and learn about new stuff, and I expect that people are as excited as me about the content. Well, shoot, when you're teaching about how land investors in Phoenix took advantage of a whole slew of different people -- how can visitors get excited about that? I digress.
What are your strengths, besides baking? How does that relate to what you're doing now, or what you want to do in the future?
And, I'll leave you with a recipe. Clearly there are TONS of homemade spaghetti sauces out there. Many of them consist of an extensive amount of ingredients. I have married into a family that has a passed-down version of spaghetti sauce that is conviently the MOST delicious, and I think one of the most simple to make. AND it only uses one pot!! Wonderful. I make it about once a month, and freeze it in servings for the two of us. Josh does not like meatballs with pasta (I know, blasphemy!) so I take some out and freeze those separately, because he will eat meatball sandwiches.
Ransco Spaghetti Sauce with Meatballs
1 lb sweet italian sausage (or, whatever spicy-ness level you prefer, preferably uncased)
1 egg
1 cup (I think) italian breadcrumbs
Olive oil
Vegetabil oil
2 28 oz cans tomato puree (even the cheapest kind will still taste good)
2 small cans tomato paste
Salt/Pepper
Combine sausage, egg, and breadcrumbs in a bowl. A note on the amount of breadcrumbs -- Josh's mom says to eyeball the amount of breadcrumbs so that it matches the amount of meat, meaning just dump in about a third of that can of breadcrumbs. I come from the school of carefully making your own breadcrumbs, or at least using panko, but in this recipe, the can of flavored breadcrumbs worked wonderfully, and the eliminates the need to add in all sorts of other stuff.
Form meat mixture into meatballs, you'll probably get about 25, depending on the size. Pour about an inch or so of mixture of olive oil and vegetable oil in your stock pot, or whatever large pot you have, and heat over medium heat. You want the oil very hot so that when the meatballs cook when you drop them in, not absorb a bunch of oil. I wait until I can the little lines forming in the oil (not sure of the scientific reason).
Drop the meatballs in, and cook for about 10 minutes, turning to ensure browning. You're just browning the meatballs, not cooking them through. Scoop out the meatballs one they are brown.
Pour in canned tomato puree and stir. Bring to a boil, and lower to simmer. Return meatballs to pot and cook for at least 1.5 hours. I cook it until I realize I've cooked it for 2.5. Seems not to matter!! Stir every once in a while to ensure the bottom doesn't brown.
So, the ingredients are really really simple, and every time I make the sauce I have the urge to add fresh herbs, garlic, whatever. I resist the urge because as written, the recipe is so good. But, if you feel the need, add stuff! Its a flexible and forgiving recipe.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
On the Having, Eating of Cake
Recently having had a cake in my house - a rare thing, perhaps twice a year - made us think about the saying "You can't have your cake and eat it too." It makes no sense. If you *have* a cake, what's there to stop you from eating it, too?
So we looked into it. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) And we found that it's frequently misunderstood, in exactly the way I describe above. But what it really means is that it's impossible to both have the physical object of the cake AND to consume the cake. Once you eat it, you no longer have it. And that gave me a really nice appreciation for this particular food idiom. You can either be in possession of something but not get to enjoy it...or you can consume it but then it's gone. It's very meditative.
I have been looking intostudying vipassana, or mindfulness, meditation for a few years now, and while hardly a regular practitioner, there are some concepts from it that I think have proven incredibly useful tools for me. One of which is the idea that we so often live our lives rethinking about what has happened, or concerning ourselves with what might happen in the future, rather than experiencing the present moment.
I think that's always true of me, anyway, but particularly having switched jobs in the last year. I hesitate to say "having switched careers", because having left museum work, which I did consider a career, I was happy to land a job in something different that I didn't know a whole lot about. And I like doing training for now, but I'm not sure it's a "career" for me (and I even question whether I care about having something I can label as a "career" anymore anyway). But there was a lot of disappointment in letting my museum career go (I think especially since it wasn't exactly by choice). My last museum job I thought I had finally landed my "dream job," only to find the workplace was fraught with all kinds of issues that made it anything but. And then I think about how if I am to achieve my "dream job," I'm going to have to create it myself somehow...and what that "dream job" looks like now, I have no idea, but maybe it's something around food and writing. But then, just as I'm thinking, hey, just do what you love to do in your spare time and work will, er, work itself out, I came across the article "I Was a Cookbook Ghostwriter" in the New York Times this week. A cautionary tale. Not only did I really identify with the phrase "I realized then that what had seemed like a dream job...would hold more humiliations than I'd imagined," she also goes on to detail two paths. The path of the cook or chef personality who grows to such popularity as to merit a cookbook...only to be so overextended as to require a ghostwriter to craft and invent recipes that reflect their own outlook on food and cooking. And her own path as the ghostwriter, whose skills and contributions as the food writer she'd hoped to be go largely unacknowledged, unrecognized, and end up being exploited in her "dream job."
I'm not really sure what the overall point of her article was, but here's what I took away from it: It almost seems like you can either do your dream work (but not necessarily for a job/career) or you can have your "dream job" only to find that means you can't possess the satisfaction and fulfillment that you thought would come with it. You can't have and eat the cake.
So we looked into it. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) And we found that it's frequently misunderstood, in exactly the way I describe above. But what it really means is that it's impossible to both have the physical object of the cake AND to consume the cake. Once you eat it, you no longer have it. And that gave me a really nice appreciation for this particular food idiom. You can either be in possession of something but not get to enjoy it...or you can consume it but then it's gone. It's very meditative.
I have been looking into
I think that's always true of me, anyway, but particularly having switched jobs in the last year. I hesitate to say "having switched careers", because having left museum work, which I did consider a career, I was happy to land a job in something different that I didn't know a whole lot about. And I like doing training for now, but I'm not sure it's a "career" for me (and I even question whether I care about having something I can label as a "career" anymore anyway). But there was a lot of disappointment in letting my museum career go (I think especially since it wasn't exactly by choice). My last museum job I thought I had finally landed my "dream job," only to find the workplace was fraught with all kinds of issues that made it anything but. And then I think about how if I am to achieve my "dream job," I'm going to have to create it myself somehow...and what that "dream job" looks like now, I have no idea, but maybe it's something around food and writing. But then, just as I'm thinking, hey, just do what you love to do in your spare time and work will, er, work itself out, I came across the article "I Was a Cookbook Ghostwriter" in the New York Times this week. A cautionary tale. Not only did I really identify with the phrase "I realized then that what had seemed like a dream job...would hold more humiliations than I'd imagined," she also goes on to detail two paths. The path of the cook or chef personality who grows to such popularity as to merit a cookbook...only to be so overextended as to require a ghostwriter to craft and invent recipes that reflect their own outlook on food and cooking. And her own path as the ghostwriter, whose skills and contributions as the food writer she'd hoped to be go largely unacknowledged, unrecognized, and end up being exploited in her "dream job."
I'm not really sure what the overall point of her article was, but here's what I took away from it: It almost seems like you can either do your dream work (but not necessarily for a job/career) or you can have your "dream job" only to find that means you can't possess the satisfaction and fulfillment that you thought would come with it. You can't have and eat the cake.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Puttin It to a Vote
I was just reading about Super Tuesday. Maybe that's why I'm in a voting mood, so let's decide once & for all, and I *might* have time to start slowly migrating content over to the new blog site this weekend after this busy week at work.
My top 3, in no particular order: (all end in .blogspot.com)
recipeblueprint
663recipes - as in there are 663 miles between SLC & PHX. Btw, when can we come visit again?!
quipsanddip
Things here are great, but it's a busy week. Work has been really hectic - we have a lot of trainings & project deadlines coming all at once this week - and I'm looking forward to the weekend, but that'll be busy too. I just joined a meetup group to meet some moms but I'm not sure it's a good fit for me. It's more structured than I would like (you *must* attend at least 1 meetup a month or be dropped, you *must* propose & plan at least one event for the group each month, blah blah blah). But I thought I'd give it a shot, so we have a playgroup in the park Saturday morning, then it's our friends Lianne & Saul's daughter's 1st birthday party at 11, and then Sara's taking me out for my birthday Saturday night. It'll all be fun, but I'm already tired thinking about it!
I was trying to think what to make for a little snack to bring to the playgroup. The snack is for the adults, not the kiddos. Since the meetup's at 9:00, I was thinking something brunchy - scones or muffins, maybe. Baked goods are much easier for something like this because you can just grab one and it doesn't require a fork or plate. I've made ATK's cinnamon streusel coffee cake before and it's always a huge hit. Bonus: the one recipe makes two cakes. But, that's not what I'm making because I just made it for my neighbors not that long ago. I'm going to make homemade granola because it's easy, it's snacky, it's not too heavy, and I have time to make it today and not worry about it spoiling before Saturday morning. Plus I can throw it on my yogurt in the meantime. Though the pictures of granola on Our Kitchen Sink look awfully enticing, I'd stumbled on Technicolor Kitchen's granola recipe first (via this recipe for blackberry coconut oat bars, which I'm still going to have to make. Soon!) so that's what I used. It's baking now and it smells very homey. I can smell the brown sugar and honey caramelizing. Mmmmmm.
I made a couple of adjustments, based on ingredients I didn't have.
2 c oats
1 t cinnamon
1 t salt
3 T + 1 t veg oil
1/4 c honey
1/4 c brown sugar
1 t vanilla
1/3 c almonds - didn't have any, subbed pecans
1/3 c hazelnuts - none. Didn't have anything to sub, so omitted and then went back and added a bit more oats to thicken everything up.
2/3 dried cranberries
I also tossed in a dash of orange extract.
Preheat oven to 325; line a baking sheet. I use silpat baking mats, but you can use parchment if you don't. Toss oats with cinnamon and salt. Here I deviated and just tossed together all the dry ingredients. She calls for sprinking the sticky oats with the nuts and cranberries, but I was too lazy for that. In a separate bowl, whisk oil, honey, brown sugar, and vanilla, then pour over oats mixture. Spread on the pan evenly. Bake for ? minutes, periodically taking out to turn with a spatula. Why the question mark on time? Because it's still baking. Her recipe calls for baking 10 minutes, then removing to flip and adding the almonds, then baking for another 5 before flipping again, then baking for another 10 and adding the hazelnuts...you get the idea. Since I had tossed everything together, I'm just going by smell here. Remove from the oven, cool completely, then add the cranberries (again, they're already in my granola, so there you go).
My top 3, in no particular order: (all end in .blogspot.com)
recipeblueprint
663recipes - as in there are 663 miles between SLC & PHX. Btw, when can we come visit again?!
quipsanddip
Things here are great, but it's a busy week. Work has been really hectic - we have a lot of trainings & project deadlines coming all at once this week - and I'm looking forward to the weekend, but that'll be busy too. I just joined a meetup group to meet some moms but I'm not sure it's a good fit for me. It's more structured than I would like (you *must* attend at least 1 meetup a month or be dropped, you *must* propose & plan at least one event for the group each month, blah blah blah). But I thought I'd give it a shot, so we have a playgroup in the park Saturday morning, then it's our friends Lianne & Saul's daughter's 1st birthday party at 11, and then Sara's taking me out for my birthday Saturday night. It'll all be fun, but I'm already tired thinking about it!
I was trying to think what to make for a little snack to bring to the playgroup. The snack is for the adults, not the kiddos. Since the meetup's at 9:00, I was thinking something brunchy - scones or muffins, maybe. Baked goods are much easier for something like this because you can just grab one and it doesn't require a fork or plate. I've made ATK's cinnamon streusel coffee cake before and it's always a huge hit. Bonus: the one recipe makes two cakes. But, that's not what I'm making because I just made it for my neighbors not that long ago. I'm going to make homemade granola because it's easy, it's snacky, it's not too heavy, and I have time to make it today and not worry about it spoiling before Saturday morning. Plus I can throw it on my yogurt in the meantime. Though the pictures of granola on Our Kitchen Sink look awfully enticing, I'd stumbled on Technicolor Kitchen's granola recipe first (via this recipe for blackberry coconut oat bars, which I'm still going to have to make. Soon!) so that's what I used. It's baking now and it smells very homey. I can smell the brown sugar and honey caramelizing. Mmmmmm.
I made a couple of adjustments, based on ingredients I didn't have.
2 c oats
1 t cinnamon
1 t salt
3 T + 1 t veg oil
1/4 c honey
1/4 c brown sugar
1 t vanilla
1/3 c almonds - didn't have any, subbed pecans
1/3 c hazelnuts - none. Didn't have anything to sub, so omitted and then went back and added a bit more oats to thicken everything up.
2/3 dried cranberries
I also tossed in a dash of orange extract.
Preheat oven to 325; line a baking sheet. I use silpat baking mats, but you can use parchment if you don't. Toss oats with cinnamon and salt. Here I deviated and just tossed together all the dry ingredients. She calls for sprinking the sticky oats with the nuts and cranberries, but I was too lazy for that. In a separate bowl, whisk oil, honey, brown sugar, and vanilla, then pour over oats mixture. Spread on the pan evenly. Bake for ? minutes, periodically taking out to turn with a spatula. Why the question mark on time? Because it's still baking. Her recipe calls for baking 10 minutes, then removing to flip and adding the almonds, then baking for another 5 before flipping again, then baking for another 10 and adding the hazelnuts...you get the idea. Since I had tossed everything together, I'm just going by smell here. Remove from the oven, cool completely, then add the cranberries (again, they're already in my granola, so there you go).
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Birthday Dinner!
Michael had asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday and I wanted to do dinner and a movie. But since we still have no sitter, we had to adapt - we got Horrible Bosses from Netflix and Michael offered to make me dinner. Luckily he's a good cook!
He had found country style pork ribs on sale - and we had leftover chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, so tacos it would be. He used a barbecue spice rub on the ribs - Corky's barbecue seasoning to be exact, to which he added more garlic salt and black and white pepper. He then made the sauce by pureeing the can of adobo chipotle peppers with some cider vinegar, some soy sauce, and brown sugar. Remember, we just guesstimate the amounts, so whatever looks & smells good will work. Then all of that went into the slow cooker to simmer for, I dunno, I want to say about 6 hours. Once it's done, you shred the meat, and if you're lucky enough to have a fat separator, good for you - the sauce is easy. We do not, so it's more of trying to siphon off some of the fat & saving what you can salvage from the sauce. Serve on small flour tortillas with shredded cabbage, salsa, and a bit of queso fresco. The pork is juicy and flavorful, not too spicy. A girl couldn't ask for more. Well, besides second helpings...
For dessert, we had the lemon cake as promised. I made the one from Fine Cooking, with a couple of adjustments as noted below:
9 1/4 oz cake flour
2 3/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 3/4 c sugar
2 T finely grated lemon zest
3/4 c butter, softened
1 c whole milk, room temp
5 egg whites, room temp
1/4 c cream of tartar
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two round cake pans. Whisk the cake flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl - I don't sift, and it didn't make a lick of difference, I assure you.
Steal lemons from neighbor's lemon tree under dark cover of night. (She's a total bitch, so I bet she'd have an issue with me borrowing a few, even though she just lets them fall to the ground for her landscapers to pick up once a week). Pulse 1/4 cup of the sugar with the zest in a food processor until well combined. When it comes to the lemon zest, I do not own a microplane. I've always thought that it would be cool, but never been able to justify the purchase of one. So I make zest using a regular grater, and that works for me. Also, while the cake turned out absolutely delicious, it didn't pack quite the lemon punch that I would have liked, so I'd up the amount of lemon zest next time. The lemon curd filling (below) had the perfect lemony flavor, so it's not a big deal overall, but I'd just use more lemon zest in the cake itself in the future.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and lemon sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy (about 1 1/2 minutes). Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar and beat until smooth (about 1 1/2 minutes). Beat in a quarter of the milk just until blended. On low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the milk in three batches, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula; beat just until blended.
For the next step, I really wished I had had an extra mixing bowl and beater for my stand mixer, but I do not. Luckily, I'd read through the recipe, so I used my hand mixer for the previous step and saved the stand mixer for the egg whites...
In another large bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer (with clean beaters) on medium speed just until foamy. Add the cream of tartar, increase the speed to medium high, and beat just until the whites form stiff peaks when the beaters are lifted. Add a quarter of the whites to the batter and gently fold them in with a whisk or a rubber spatula; continue to gently fold in the whites, a quarter at a time, being careful not to deflate the mixture.
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans. Smooth the tops with the spatula. Bake until a pick inserted in the centers comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. That's what Fine Cooking says. Now I don't know if it's because my oven is a total piece of sh*t or for some other reason, but 35-40 minutes was RIDICULOUS. I set it to check at 15 minutes, and I could smell them already. I checked and they were nearly done. I set the timer to check again after another 10 minutes, but after 5, the cakes had pulled away from the sides of the pans and were going to be overdone if I left them in any longer. Let cool in the pans on a rack for 10 minutes. Run a table knife around the inside of the pans and carefully invert each cake out onto the rack. Flip them right side up and let cool completely.
While the cakes cooled, I made the lemon curd filling:
Assembly: You're supposed to cut each cake into halves so you have 4 cake layers and spread the lemon curd between each. I did not do that - I just used half the lemon curd in between the 2 cakes. The original recipe called for a lemon frosting, but several of the commenters noted that the frosting was gross and they'd substituted a cream cheese frosting (which I'm not a big fan of). I had been craving some fruity complement to the lemon. I was originally thinking cherries, but strawberries were in season and on sale, so I used them to make strawberry buttercream, inspired by Martha Stewart's recipe. However, Martha Stewart's recipe calls for whisking the whites & sugar overheat until "mixture registers 160 degrees on a candy thermometer." F that. I don't have a candy thermometer, and, more importantly, buttercream doesn't have to be that hard. Do a quick and easy version instead:
2 1/2 sticks butter, softened
2 1/2 c confectioners' sugar, give or take
pinch salt
1 t vanilla
2 T heavy cream (I used the whole milk I had on hand)
1 1/2 cups strawberries, pureed
Throw the butter into the mixer on medium until it's smooth and getting fluffy. Slowly add the confectioners' sugar - I didn't end up using all of it - it just depends on your texture / thickness preference. I'd gone ahead and measured out the 2 1/2 cups into a separate bowl and just added it in a little at a time until it was right because I know from making it before that it can come out way too thick if you use all the sugar, even taking into account that it'll thin out a little bit once you add the cream and vanilla. Toss in the strawberries. Even with all the strawberries, I wasn't getting enough of a strawberry flavor, so I added about 1 c strawberry preserves and kept mixing. Finally, add the vanilla & milk/cream and mix until blended.
It wasprobably the best birthday cake within recent memory. The raspberry-filled chocolate cupcakes with rich vanilla icing I made for Michael one year were good and all, but this? This was better. The cake has a wonderfully light texture - almost on the verge of an angel food cake thanks to that folded meringue - and the lemon custard filling would be an excellent dessert all on its own. The strawberry buttercream is rich and flavorful. And since it didn't have chocolate, I could share it with Millie! She got to have her very first taste of cake (without any frosting). And you know what I'm going to do next paycheck? Go get a microplane because I will be making this cake again and again.
He had found country style pork ribs on sale - and we had leftover chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, so tacos it would be. He used a barbecue spice rub on the ribs - Corky's barbecue seasoning to be exact, to which he added more garlic salt and black and white pepper. He then made the sauce by pureeing the can of adobo chipotle peppers with some cider vinegar, some soy sauce, and brown sugar. Remember, we just guesstimate the amounts, so whatever looks & smells good will work. Then all of that went into the slow cooker to simmer for, I dunno, I want to say about 6 hours. Once it's done, you shred the meat, and if you're lucky enough to have a fat separator, good for you - the sauce is easy. We do not, so it's more of trying to siphon off some of the fat & saving what you can salvage from the sauce. Serve on small flour tortillas with shredded cabbage, salsa, and a bit of queso fresco. The pork is juicy and flavorful, not too spicy. A girl couldn't ask for more. Well, besides second helpings...
For dessert, we had the lemon cake as promised. I made the one from Fine Cooking, with a couple of adjustments as noted below:
9 1/4 oz cake flour
2 3/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 3/4 c sugar
2 T finely grated lemon zest
3/4 c butter, softened
1 c whole milk, room temp
5 egg whites, room temp
1/4 c cream of tartar
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two round cake pans. Whisk the cake flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl - I don't sift, and it didn't make a lick of difference, I assure you.
Steal lemons from neighbor's lemon tree under dark cover of night. (She's a total bitch, so I bet she'd have an issue with me borrowing a few, even though she just lets them fall to the ground for her landscapers to pick up once a week). Pulse 1/4 cup of the sugar with the zest in a food processor until well combined. When it comes to the lemon zest, I do not own a microplane. I've always thought that it would be cool, but never been able to justify the purchase of one. So I make zest using a regular grater, and that works for me. Also, while the cake turned out absolutely delicious, it didn't pack quite the lemon punch that I would have liked, so I'd up the amount of lemon zest next time. The lemon curd filling (below) had the perfect lemony flavor, so it's not a big deal overall, but I'd just use more lemon zest in the cake itself in the future.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and lemon sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy (about 1 1/2 minutes). Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar and beat until smooth (about 1 1/2 minutes). Beat in a quarter of the milk just until blended. On low speed, add the flour mixture alternately with the milk in three batches, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula; beat just until blended.
For the next step, I really wished I had had an extra mixing bowl and beater for my stand mixer, but I do not. Luckily, I'd read through the recipe, so I used my hand mixer for the previous step and saved the stand mixer for the egg whites...
In another large bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer (with clean beaters) on medium speed just until foamy. Add the cream of tartar, increase the speed to medium high, and beat just until the whites form stiff peaks when the beaters are lifted. Add a quarter of the whites to the batter and gently fold them in with a whisk or a rubber spatula; continue to gently fold in the whites, a quarter at a time, being careful not to deflate the mixture.
Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans. Smooth the tops with the spatula. Bake until a pick inserted in the centers comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. That's what Fine Cooking says. Now I don't know if it's because my oven is a total piece of sh*t or for some other reason, but 35-40 minutes was RIDICULOUS. I set it to check at 15 minutes, and I could smell them already. I checked and they were nearly done. I set the timer to check again after another 10 minutes, but after 5, the cakes had pulled away from the sides of the pans and were going to be overdone if I left them in any longer. Let cool in the pans on a rack for 10 minutes. Run a table knife around the inside of the pans and carefully invert each cake out onto the rack. Flip them right side up and let cool completely.
While the cakes cooled, I made the lemon curd filling:
1/2 c. butter
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. fresh lemon juice
3 T. finely grated lemon zest
Pinch salt
6 large egg yolks, room temp
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. fresh lemon juice
3 T. finely grated lemon zest
Pinch salt
6 large egg yolks, room temp
Assembly: You're supposed to cut each cake into halves so you have 4 cake layers and spread the lemon curd between each. I did not do that - I just used half the lemon curd in between the 2 cakes. The original recipe called for a lemon frosting, but several of the commenters noted that the frosting was gross and they'd substituted a cream cheese frosting (which I'm not a big fan of). I had been craving some fruity complement to the lemon. I was originally thinking cherries, but strawberries were in season and on sale, so I used them to make strawberry buttercream, inspired by Martha Stewart's recipe. However, Martha Stewart's recipe calls for whisking the whites & sugar overheat until "mixture registers 160 degrees on a candy thermometer." F that. I don't have a candy thermometer, and, more importantly, buttercream doesn't have to be that hard. Do a quick and easy version instead:
2 1/2 sticks butter, softened
2 1/2 c confectioners' sugar, give or take
pinch salt
1 t vanilla
2 T heavy cream (I used the whole milk I had on hand)
1 1/2 cups strawberries, pureed
Throw the butter into the mixer on medium until it's smooth and getting fluffy. Slowly add the confectioners' sugar - I didn't end up using all of it - it just depends on your texture / thickness preference. I'd gone ahead and measured out the 2 1/2 cups into a separate bowl and just added it in a little at a time until it was right because I know from making it before that it can come out way too thick if you use all the sugar, even taking into account that it'll thin out a little bit once you add the cream and vanilla. Toss in the strawberries. Even with all the strawberries, I wasn't getting enough of a strawberry flavor, so I added about 1 c strawberry preserves and kept mixing. Finally, add the vanilla & milk/cream and mix until blended.
It was
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