AUSTIN AGRODOLCE

Hook 'Em Horns Curried Carrot Soup

2010-10-16T09:56:00.001-05:00

October is Soup Month at our house. Football is in full swing by now and I appreciate the ease of having soup made ahead for weekend football watching. I can reheat the soup slowly, keeping a close eye on the game, and have my meal ready to roll at halftime.

I also like having soup on hand for Halloween. I am chief doorbell answerer and candy hander outer, so I want something easy for dinner that night plus something I can reheat if the traffic on the front porch keeps me away from my meal for very long at a time.

I have two or three reliably delicious soup recipes already in my repertoire but I wanted to branch out this year.

I had most of a bunch of organic carrots already on hand, and being a lifetime UT Longhorn fan figured I couldn't go wrong with a basic orange color scheme. Enter this simple recipe I found on the Food Network site for Curried Carrot Soup.

I liked the looks of this for all sorts of reasons besides the potential for a gorgeously Hook'Em Horns orange hue. The prep looked easy and there weren't 426 ingredients to wrangle. Turns out it was every bit as flavorful as it was colorful, so let's get down to work and make some soup together. I'm going to walk you through the recipe as written, but read ahead to get some seasoning notes, deal?

Peel and thinly slice 8 medium carrots, 4 medium celery stalks, and rough chop a medium onion.

In a large pot put 3 tablespoons of olive oil adding in 2 teaspoons of curry powder. Stir over medium heat for one or two minutes until the mixture is fragrant.

Add the sliced vegetables to the oil and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes. Be prepared to spend most of the last 7 of those minutes fighting the impulse to get a spoon and eat everything in the pan at that point, the mix of vegetables and spices smells that good.

Stir in 5 cups of chicken broth and let that come to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and let it cook about 10-12 minutes until the vegetables are very tender.

If you don't trust the timing or your eyes, the tenderness is easy to determine by putting a couple of the thickest carrot slices you can find on a plate and seeing if they are easy to cut with a fork. Or you could use a spoon against the side of the pot. I was curious about what seemed to me the teensy amount of curry called for in this recipe so I wanted an early taste.

Once your veggies are tender remove the pot from the heat and let it stand 10 or so minutes. Then you'll want to remove the oil from the top of the soup by laying a paper towel on top to blot it off. Carefully discard the oily towel. No, I didn't take a photo of the oily paper towel. You're welcome.

Please be careful blending hot stuff - you know the drill and if you don't refer to your owner's manual before trying this the first time. You want to enjoy eating all of this soup, not end up wearing it.

Working in 2 cup batches transfer the soup to a blender and puree.

Once the soup is pureed, return it to a pan over medium heat and reheat through. Season with a tablespoon of lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.

Folks, here is where I parted company with the recipe in a big way. I felt this soup was headed in a good direction but to me to it still needed a big seasoning boost. I'd already started out with one more teaspoon of curry powder than was called for. My soup so far still tasted too carroty I thought. Not enough depth of flavor for me though I realized a hiatus overnight in the refrigerator might fix some of that. I decided to add more curry powder along with some cayenne pepper after getting the lemon juice, salt and white pepper added in to taste. By the time I finished sprinkling and stirring and tasting and sprinkling again, I'd added in another tablespoon of curry powder and about 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne.

Next time I make this, and oh yes, there will definitely be a next time, I plan on starting out with two tablespoons of curry powder in the oil. I will try a half and half blend of hot Madras curry and regular and see if it still needs a boost from cayenne at the end. I could certainly see playing with other toasted spice mixtures just to see a few of the different places this soup can go. To me that is in great part the beauty of a simple soup base like this one. You can absolutely customize the seasoning to suit your needs.

But what you really need is some curried carrot soup for starters.

This soup has great mouth feel. It is super creamy tasting without an ounce of dairy fat other than the topping I chose for my first bowl. I will take this batch all sorts of different directions with garnishes to keep from getting bored. I also predict this soup is going to provide fun color play served as an entree while watching UT football later this month. Yeah, that's right - I am one of those people who would absolutely take my color cues for a meal to coordinate with my home team uniforms. And yeah, I'm not blind - carrots may not result in burnt orange soup - but they come close enough.

Today I used a chipotle crema topping on the bowl I had for lunch. Before I licked the bowl clean I tried the soup with a bit of smoked cheddar flavor popcorn on top just for fun. It was awesome. I plan on crumbling bacon and a little grated sharp cheese on top to get the Hub to enthusiastically try some later this week for dinner. If I decide I want to dress it up, say for a Thanksgiving appetizer, brown butter sautéed sage leaves would be an elegant finishing touch.

Organic onions, celery and carrots are available in practically every grocery store these days. Hie thee to your favorite, buy yourself some and in about 40 minutes you can have your own batch of delicious Curried Carrot Soup. Healthy, delicious, easy. Hook 'Em horns orange. Looks like all winners from here.

Little boxes in the Hill Country

2010-10-10T16:39:00.003-05:00

Wow, I took my eyes off the calendar for just a minute or two and suddenly, WHAM! It is October, one third of the way into the month already, and I am sitting here with windows opened wide to welcome cool morning air, listening to the strains of music drifting over from ACL Music Fest.

What with it feeling like all the world converging upon nearby Zilker Park for a kinder gentler version of Fest this year, it made perfect sense to the Hub and I to pile into the car and head the other direction this weekend.

On the advice of Kathleen Scott of Hill Country Mysteries, we set our sights for Blanco generally, and the Redbud Cafe specifically.

It was a lovely day, a reasonable hour long drive, and the cafe certainly did not disappoint. In fact, there were only two letdowns for the day, one small and one slightly larger.

A tree grows in Blanco..

The small disappointment for the day was that by the time we wandered in after lunch the highly recommended Deutsch Apple bakery had sold out of nearly every portable potable. I'd been warned this could happen which made it a little easier to be philosophical at the sight of shelves quite emptied of apple cakes and muffins. I still made do handsomely, bringing home a jar of Texas made apple butter and some of their delicious cookies.

The Deutsch Apple Bakery

The Big Nasty? I'll get around to that in just a moment. First the fun stuff....

We'd decided not to check out the Real Ale brewery this go round, saving that as incentive for a return trip on a Friday afternoon when their tasting room is open.

Instead we headed straight for the Square to check out the Redbud Cafe Market and Pub. It was everything it was promised to be and more.....

I appreciated the many thoughtful design touches evident throughout the Cafe. Here, a reflected portrait.

Wandering in, my eye was first captured by a series of large wall displays featuring stenciled rainfall records for Blanco broken down by month and year.

After dutifully checking to see what the accumulations were for the months/years the Hub and I were born, I turned my attention towards how we'd get our lunch.

Here's the general drill. You walk in, adjust your eyes, try to ignore the siren song of the pottery and gift shop beckoning through an open door to your right, and wander over to a bakery style counter filled with goodies.

You wrench your eyes up off the bakery items displayed and check out the menu for the day. A friendly face at the counter will answer whatever questions you have, take the order for your lunch, and then if you are so inclined, guide you around the corner of the counter to your left where the Real Ale beers on tap are located. The routine repeats, you ask any questions you have, get a sample taste as needed and then hopefully order the perfect cold brew to imbibe while you wait for your food.

We consoled ourselves for bypassing the brewery itself by each choosing a glass of a different one of the four types of Real Ale sold on tap at the Cafe. The Hub thoroughly enjoyed their Oktoberfest with the Reuben sandwich he ordered that arrived nestled between slices of the most gorgeous marble rye bread I've ever seen. I blissed out sipping a glass of Full Moon Pale Rye Ale in between bites of the amazing seasonal Pear and Bleu Cheese salad.

There we sat, settled in at one of several dozen oilcloth covered tables, munching and sipping to our heart's content while we soaked in our well appointed surroundings and people watched through windows looking out onto Blanco's town square.

I gotta admit up front I never expected to see so many gray haired pony tailed men in one place, especially not any place so far out into the Texas Hill Country. It would appear from superficial inspection that bikers and old hippies have all but colonized the area. I found that heartening for some reason I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Old Blanco Courthouse - now their Visitor Center.

In retrospect, the crunchier than expected nature of Blanco was probably just what I needed to buffer me from the Large Letdown that came as part of our ride back home.

The Blanco River

Said letdown being the nasty shock that unfolded before our weary eyes as we took a series of exploratory turns onto smaller and smaller roads on the way back into Austin. Every twist and turn of the selected county and/or ranch roads we explored made it painfully clear the blight of suburbia has spread in malignant rings far far outwards from Austin. Developments jammed with houses have become about as ubiquitous (and to my eye as unattractive) as oak wilt.

I've watched the exploding census counts for our area and I guess I knew in my head those developments had to be out there somewhere, but passing through one huge subdivision after another gave made me a little heartsick as I realized how much territory has already been converted from more open spaces.

Yeah, I know, I am beginning to sound super duper geezery here and maybe now you're wondering how long it can be before I start nattering on about how great it was when sliced bread was 40 cents a loaf or moaning about my childhood trials walking barefoot to school through the snow, uphill both ways. I promise I get it. Growth inevitably happens and it isn't always awful.

I'll even admit to you the Hub and I both kept having our eyes and imaginations captured by For Sale signs offering acreage all along the road between here and there. We pretend it wouldn't be any different for us to move out to the country. That the house we might build or renovate would be greener and lovelier. That our wanting to live away from the hubbub is an impulse totally removed from whatever brought all those other folks into their houses crammed into the hills surrounding Austin.

Maybe what we want is something different, maybe it isn't. Nevertheless, knowing there are a bunch of folks out around Blanco letting their freak flags fly? It is just about the perfect antidote to offset the impact of all those little boxes marching up and down the hills outside of town.

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.

There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,

And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,

And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1990. Malvina and her husband were on their way from where they lived in Berkeley, through San Francisco and down the peninsula to La Honda where she was to sing at a meeting of the Friends’ Committee on Legislation. As she drove through Daly City, she said “Bud, take the wheel. I feel a song coming on.”

Happiness on Hand

2010-09-28T17:40:00.000-05:00

If you could look through your computer to see me at mine you'd see me smiling and, let me rush to add, while fully dressed! No blogging while in pajamas going on over here - no sirree! Lately I'm smiling a lot because I'm happy for several good reasons.

One large helping of happiness is being served up by our wonderful Fall weather. We've woken up to temperatures in the high 50s two mornings running. Though that may seem like nothing to you folks living in necks of the woods with four seasons per year, around here we have "Way Too Hot", "Just Right" and "Pretty Chilly" for our weather options.

The weeks of late September - mid November are typically "Just Right" weather and that makes them a local treasure. For the small subset of us not allergic to anything floating in the air on this side of the calendar wheel, the pleasures of open windows for the few weeks of cooler Fall weather leads to outright giddiness nonTexans might not fully appreciate. Although California, I am guessing with your current weirdly hot weather you are feeling us a little bit more today, am I right? I thought so.

Cooler weather here means finally firing up the oven without needing to turn up the air conditioner. It means appreciating oven hot foods as opposed to sticking with pepper hot foods and their contradictory tendency to cool a body off.

Cooler weather also means football, naturally. You do remember I am writing this from Texas, yes? Football is an obsession here on every level. High School, College, Pro teams - it matters not. If you play it we will watch. And watching football calls for special comfort foods, especially when the home team sputters. While I can't recall how it got started, for several years now any list of football season comfort foods pretty much begins and ends with Muffaleta sandwiches.

Muffaleta sandwiches need one crucial ingredient - one I am always happy to have on hand. Whenever olive spread (or olive salad - it's called different things different places) is in the house, or rather in the refrigerator, I am smiling. I throw mine together from a combination of recipes - you can find dozens online.

I typically use two parts green olives to one part black olives and then throw in any of a number of pickled pepper pieces, some chopped celery or carrots, roasted red peppers, olive oil, red vinegar, salt and freshly ground black pepper. I process it in pulses until it looks just right.

I make olive spread ahead to keep on hand because it always tastes best after it sits around a while. The flavors stick to themselves for starters, sort of like boys and girls at a middle school party, lined up against opposing gymnasium walls. But you give them some time in the refrigerator, the tastes introduce themselves, get started swapping stories, and before you know it they are all old backslapping friends and the sum is much much greater than the total of the individual parts.

It is that great summed up olive salad more than any other single ingredient that makes a great Muffaleta sandwich. And it is that great Muffaleta sandwich that transforms watching any football game into a good time no matter how my team is playing.

For non-football dinnertimes, and tonight is one instance of such, I am always happy to have a batch of Pioneer Woman's Buttered Rosemary Rolls cooling on the counter.

This is a do-over. The first time I made these a couple of weeks ago, I botched the rise by waiting too long afterwards to bake them. The poor babies fell and never quite got back up on their yeasty feet. They were tasty, sure, but not gorgeous like they were meant to be.

This time I baked them promptly with gorgeousness as promised. I left them in the cast iron skillet and will simply reheat them in the residual heat left over after I finish roasting a chicken. Er, I will if I can keep from hiding in the coat closet and eating them all by myself that is. They smell soooooo good.

I used a mixture of mostly rosemary with a little fresh thyme thrown in to echo the herbs I will sprinkle on that aforementioned chicken I plan to roast for dinner tonight.Because as I write this, I have a wonderfully fresh Dewberry Farms whole chicken air drying in the refrigerator. Isn't it happy looking? Looking at it is making me smile, anyway.

I've read air drying encourages the crispest possible skin after roasting. Friends, I'll be honest. It's that crispy skin I'm after. The rest of the chicken will be delicious but mostly it represents what I'll use to fill up on after I've eaten my portion of skin. The prospect of roasted chicken skin - ohhh baby yes, I am grinning at that.

Finally I am airing out the ivories due to the handful of jalapeño peppers fresh from our garden sitting on the counter. I'm pretty sure I have enough to put together a new batch of Homesick Texan Lisa Fain's Bread and Butter Jalapeño pickles featured towards the bottom of her post on what constitutes "Texan" potato salad.

This miniature harvest is coming just in the nick of time. Besides potato salad, I've added pickles from the first batch I made on to every sort of sandwich or burger imaginable. You can color me S O L D. I need me some more. Life is way too short to even try and get by without their sweet heat.

Having all this yumminess on hand is a lot like having money in the bank. Money in the bank makes you happy, doesn't it? I say to you "Here! Here is money for you to put in the bank!" and you smile, right? Right?

What about you? Is there an ingredient or the prospect of a particular dish that reliably puts a smile on your face? What's money in the bank yummy in your book? Feel free to share in the comments section. Who knows... your comment may be just the ticket to put a big grin on somebody else's face. It'll definitely make me smile.

Rosemary Vinaigrette Grilled Chicken Cutlets and Rustic Apple Tart

2010-09-18T10:12:00.000-05:00

Between a banged up ankle keeping me off my feet (read:no cooking for me which means no cooking at all around here) and the energy required to support moving my daughter's stuff back in and getting her unpacked, we have found ourselves eating take out food as often as not.

So lately whenever I actually put together dinner all on my own, it feels something like a victory. Not so much "din-ner!" but more "taaa DAAAA!".

Recently I put together a few very simple elements that in combination were very fanfare worthy. Grilled marinated chicken cutlets, heirloom tomatoes, cheese mashed potatoes followed by a rustic apple tart for dessert.

What gave cause for hooraw was that the fruits, veggies and protein were all certified organic. Securing organic ingredients lavishes a bit of extra love on family or guests. When that kind of food love is available, I mostly just try not to do anything to get too much in the way of the flavors.

I'd spotted this recipe for a rosemary vinaigrette on the Simply Recipes site. It was featured with grilled fish, but since we'd just been to Perla's Seafood and Oyster Bar for a birthday celebration, I figured to use it to grill some chicken.

Sidebar: I often hesitate when trying out recipes calling for much rosemary. As much as I enjoy the aroma and flavor, I know from experience it can quickly overpower. That said, I have tons of rosemary growing in beds around our house. It loves the heat here and as long as it is provided good drainage, will even tolerate the occasional 8-10 inch tropical storm rain (hello Hermine!) without suffering unduly.

The resulting vinaigrette was fragrant and fresh, speaking its name softly on the palate. I used grapeseed oil since I wanted to grill the meat and the olive oil called for can break down unfortunately over high heat. If I were going to use this only as a fresh dressing, and it was quite delicious drizzled lightly over purple cherokee tomato slices, I'd go with a lovely light and fruity olive oil quite happily.

I took my rosemary vinaigrette, combined it with a bit of mayonnaise and slathered it all over a whole skinless boneless chicken breast that I'd sliced and pounded into cutlets. This process accomplishes three things. Boneless skinless chicken breast meat doesn't really taste. As something of a blank culinary page it is up to you the cook to add flavor to keep it from being the bore at the table. Chicken breast is also a very lean protein. Without added fat and a quick cooking time it can easily become dried out and tough.

To give you an idea of the serving size, all these and two more pieces besides came from one whole breast. I am guessing each piece was 2-3 ounces. With pieces this small you can pile them artfully on the plate should you want to show off a bit. Your call.

My solution is to slice and pound the breast meat into cutlets, sometimes referred to as scallopine. Rather than flouring and frying as is standard with cutlets, I marinate mine at room temperature for 30-45 minutes then throw them on the grill.

Using this technique I get a good ratio of surface area to marinade. My habitual addition of a bit of mayo to the marinade means the meat is quite well protected from drying out. The thinness of a cutlet allows me to get a good sear on the outside and after about 3 minutes per side my chicken is just cooked all the way through while staying wonderfully tender and moist.

You can make a marinade from any of your favorite vinaigrettes. The basil vinaigrette I made recently would easily would work in this application as would any of a number of bottled offerings if you are pressed for time.

The final special touch was a quick rustic apple tart technique snagged from an article I found decades ago about cooking with your children. That is to say, cooking with your children there in the kitchen, helping out. If you are wanting to cook your children, well, please move along, nothing to see like that here!

You take 2-3 apples, varieties that are slightly tart and able to withstand baking work best. Peel and slice them into 1/2 inch pieces. In a bowl combine your apples with a generous splash of lemon juice (to prevent browning and add brightness), then toss well with a tablespoon of AP flour, a 1/4 cup of sugar, a generous sprinkle of cinnamon and some freshly grated nutmeg.

Pile your apples on a pie crust that has been laid out on a baking sheet on top of foil. I used the kind you can buy in the refrigerated section of the grocery store because, well just because I always use those. One of these days I'll get good at making pie crust but that is not me, not now. If you are a whiz in the pie crust making category then I honor your prowess - use your own recipe, rolled out to the size of a 9 inch pie crust.

After piling your coated apples in the center of the crust, gently fold the edges up around the apple pieces leaving 3-4 inches exposed in the center. Bake at 425 degrees for 20-25 minutes depending on your oven. You want the apples tender and the pastry just golden brown. A tart yields 4-5 servings.

There you have it. The rosemary vinaigrette marinade for the grilled chicken cutlets and rustic apple tart were two easy touches elevating dinner to something with a little more ooomph to mark the end of a very long day coming at the end of a very long week.

Home cooking doesn't have to be difficult or complicated. When all is said and done, whatever you get on the plate will be saying "I love you".

A moving experience

2010-09-12T10:25:00.001-05:00

You know how allergic reactions can develop some of the time? You are exposed to something, nothing much happens, you get a false sense of "this doesn't bother me" and so you get a little cavalier, don't worry about it the next time you are in contact.

The second go round things are just a little different though, and maybe you think, "Wow, I am glad this is not too big a problem for me because I can see how if this was worse it could be real trouble.".

Then that third exposure rolls around and you are realizing, "Whoa, OK, maybe I am reactive to this. I am going to need to be careful here and limit my exposure.".

Well folks, that is how it is with me and moves.

The Hub paid for medical school, residency and a post-training fellowship by joining a branch of the military. They took care of his tuition and books and provided a stipend during his schooling and he paid them back year for year with military service after. It should come as no surprise then to hear that required us to move around fairly regularly as a young family.

Houston for medical school. San Antonio for internship. Salt Lake City for a residency and fellowship and then California for the "paying you back for school" years of service at a regional military medical center.

Admittedly, the first few moves, while exciting in their own way, were entry level. We didn't own much, so packing it up and hauling it someplace new to unpack again was not much of a big deal. And when you are in the military, they may ask you to move but by golly in those years they also handled the logistics very supportively.

Eventually however, debts paid, we gratefully resumed civilian status. Along the way we'd accumulated a house full of stuff. And two (amazing, wonderful - I love you so so much kids!) children.

All our moves past that point were just about as complicated and frazzling as anything I am ever supposed to be wrangling needs to be.

Along the way I discovered three things about myself and the process of moving.

First I learned to prepare and have on hand a bag loaded with rolls of toilet paper, a couple of light bulbs, a box of trash bags, extra rolls of tape, a box cutter, a marking pen, bottles of water, Advil and a music source. That combination has gotten me through many a long day.

A second major lesson has been the wisdom of access to loads of high carb sugary treats along with caffeinated drinks to get through the initial push. I am not advocating this as a healthy life style believe me, but then again I don't see moving in or out of a place as healthy per se. Moving is hard physically and emotionally, even when it represents an exciting new stage of life. For me the combination of hard physical labor and emotional stress cries out for those two major food groups: sugar and caffeine.

Third truth is that moves make me crazy. Correction. At this point in my life, any move, large or small, ramps me up to Psycho Plus. My family knows this about me and depending on how fun they are finding the move themselves, they give me a little extra head space to accommodate. I do my best each and every time but I gotta tell you with each subsequent exposure, my reaction to even the idea of moving, escalates.

With that in mind, understanding there is a truck of stuff coming from Michigan to Austin to re-feather our nest for the short term (our daughter relocating back home for a stint), I wanted to make some sort of sweet loaf. I knew it would come in handy to help fuel the upcoming extra trips up and down stairs to get her stuff unloaded and sorted into place. And I knew I would rely on that sweet treat to feed the monster caloric requirements of my impending Move Psycho-Meltdown.

I put together a tried and true banana bread, bumped up a level with some chopped nuts as additional energy source. I've used this recipe for years. I keep a stash of overripe bananas in the freezer so I can whip up a batch when the impulse strikes, and I've taken to swapping out Splenda for half the sugar called for. It holds the calorie count down a bit and doesn't have any noticeable effect on the taste or as importantly, the texture.

See what I mean? Hellooo gorgeous. It may have been too long since the last time I made banana bread however because this loaf just about disappeared in two days. That meant I had movers arriving a half hour after the birds get up tomorrow and precious little sweetness left to gobble down with my coffee as fuel. No can do, folks.

I turned to a recipe for a sour cream pound cake The recipe stated it could be halved and baked in a loaf pan (the original calling for a tube or bundt pan). Congratulating myself smugly in advance, I thought it would be just the ticket. A loaf of pound cake would be just enough to get us (read:me) through the high energy requirements of the move without leaving us with a lot of leftovers to fatten up on after the last flattened boxes were hauled to the curb.

Remember a really long time ago when you started reading this post how I was talking about reactions escalating in severity due to repeated exposure? Well here is where we discover what it looks like when I say how [Oprah voice] cuhRAYzee even a small move now leaves me.

I said I wanted to have this cake on hand for the energy boost it could provide. That would come chiefly from the sugar in the recipe, right?

And even if I was trying to be a bit careful with that sugar intake, I routinely make and had just made a loaf of banana bread with a half and half Splenda and sugar mixture and it turned out great. So why then, WHY is it that I purposefully made this pound cake with all Spenda and no sugar?

Oof. What was I thinking? Just look at this. The top is caved in and those gaping holes simply do not say "delicious cake". I swear when I leaned in for a close shot I heard them whispering "be afraid, be very afraid...".

Lesson learned. Using half Splenda in a recipe is hunky dory if you are OK with using Splenda at all. Even in my pre-move nutso-ness I realize some of you are just not cool with sugar substitutes. A few of you may even be writhing around out there sensing our Splenda use is singularly responsible for polar melting and oil spills, not to mention China's rising economic domination.

I get that, truly I do and as odd as it may sound, every other ingredient I used for the recipe was organic. Some of the ingredients were both organic and local. So there, let that sink in for a moment, ye lovers of Mother Earth. My sad deflated little loaf cake may just be its own punishment for my transgressions......

The taste is what I am looking for, regulation pound cake mid-level sweetness (as opposed to the frozen at the store super sweet monsters that nobody-doesn't-like) but that texture is just really really wrong. An aberration I suppose I ought to have expected from the combination of FrankenSugar and organics.

Who am I kidding? What with the movers on the way, texture issues or no, I'll be eating every crumb of this.

Once the dust settles, I'll try the pound cake recipe out again with half sugar and half Splenda as I wish I would have yesterday. If that works out well, I'll share the recipe. Until then, hold a good thought for me as we face what look to be Indiana Jones Nazi-face meltingly high temperatures and humidity tomorrow for hours with our doors standing wide open.

There may not be enough pound cake in the universe for that.

Move-savvy as I fantasize I am, there is always wisdom out there to be shared. If you have any sure-fire-can't-miss Move Smarts to share feel free to post 'em in the comments section. Certainly any excuse to space out in front of my computer as I sit here NOT STRESSING ABOUT TOMORROW will be a welcome treat.

Meanwhile, pass me another slice of that pound cake please?

September 11, 2001 - Hope

2010-09-11T10:10:00.000-05:00

It has been nine years.

I remember very clearly - my daughter was still in high school on 9/11/01. She had left for school early that day and was in the newspaper room. As usual they had the television on.

I was at home, sitting at my computer reading on the internet, oblivious.

The telephone rang. It was my daughter.

"Mom, something bad is happening," she said. "Turn on your TV.". Then she had to go.

I turned on the television and I don't even remember what channel we were on - it wouldn't have mattered by then -pretty much every channel had switched to live coverage.

And thus began one of those days when I spent almost all of my time standing, sitting, pacing, and staring in horror. Most of it with the sound off - the images saying what needed to be said.

Nine years and the impact remains. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually.

The world is both different and is yet the same place. I am both a different person and yet the same.

Life, death, pain, joy, hate, love. They are and always have been part of this troubled world.

Hope is part of our world, too. I hold hope in my heart. Hope for my children, and for yours. Hope for our future, hope for our healing, hope we can keep from repeating past mistakes and learn to live together in peace.

One of these things

2010-09-08T08:43:00.000-05:00

We watched a lot of Sesame Street on PBS around these parts way back when. Some of the regular features shaped the way people in our family categorize and refer to the observed world to this day.

Only in this case, one of these things,

is a lot like the other.

The wages of cooking are

2010-09-04T10:25:00.000-05:00

a full load of clean dishes in the dishwasher waiting to be unloaded, flanked by both sides of the sink filled with dirty dishes waiting to go in.

However, to counterbalance.... redemption just might take the form of basil and tomatoes in the windowsill

in combination with temperatures in the low 70's throughout the morning hours. What bliss. Happy Labor Day Weekend everybody. Hope yours is everything you want it to be.

Basilicious

2010-08-31T09:45:00.035-05:00

I have Basil planted in amongst the flowers.

Every once in a while I get it right garden wise and end up with enough something or other to actually feature it in a dish. In a good year, I end up with a whole LOT of something or other. In this case, Basil. When that happens, after doing the totally predictable preparations, I yearn to take some side road a bit less traveled.

Unlike my tomatoes, the basil is doing well.

This recipe for Basil Vinaigrette from Elise at SImply Recipes represents just that.

Dijon, shallot, vinegar, oil, salt, sugar and basil. Just like that.

It is so fresh and delicious and versatile on its own that it might just light up your pesto jaded taste buds. It certainly did mine.

Last night we had the vinaigrette on a simple salad. It totally stole the show.

I am the ghost of lunch today.

Today I am going to combine some of the rest with cooked chilled pasta and use that base to spin a series of lunch salads.

I love chopping things. It makes me feel so cheffy.

The closest thing to work in this recipe was the chopping and if I hadn't been stopping to take photos the whole process would have taken maybe 10 minutes. Maybe.

Hello, gorgeous!

I can't imagine a better way to celebrate basil. Drop in on Elise and get the full recipe here.

At times

2010-08-27T11:15:00.000-05:00

this

what progress looks like.

Ready, set....

2010-08-24T08:21:00.001-05:00

Truth be told, the culling process around here has only just gotten past the early stages. For the most part until late yesterday afternoon, no matter how hard I worked, it still felt a lot like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

However, with six bags of books already taken to Goodwill, two bags dropped off at our community library, and two more topically relevant books bagged up for a friend who has just been ordained, at least the shelf space is opening up.

There are boxes waiting for another trip to Goodwill. There are two closets that will be ruthlessly (finally!) cleared out today or tomorrow and the clothes will all be donated to a charity slated to be in my neighborhood Friday. We have a young couple planning to come pick up an old couch that will be new-to-them and as far as short term goals, that battle is won.

This process has changed my seeing. I am now eyeing a closet that historically stored arts and crafts supplies (along with tennis balls, a vacuum cleaner, ironing board, iron, winter coats, a small file cabinet) and knowing this editing process can't stop until everything in there has been taken out, sorted, and at the very least reorganized, if not relocated. Not to mention the laundry room. Etcetera, etcetera.

It is all quite gratifying, if a little exhausting.

Realistically I will not get every clearing out project accomplished before the end of the calendar year. But that doesn't matter. I am happy to celebrate the spaces we have made, content to know the other projects will still be there whenever the impulse to lighten our material load next grabs me.

Meanwhile, back at the blog, all this sorting and stacking and bagging and boxing is not leaving much time, much less energy, for posting. Fear not however, while I am lugging and hauling I am also busily planning. I have a series of ideas cooking up to be shared with you right here, hopefully sooner rather than later.

While you are waiting, I invite you to visit Ree at The Pioneer Woman to pick up the full recipe for these amazingly delicious Apple Dumplings. The recipe calls for an ingredient that may surprise you but gives you results that won't disappoint on any front.

Next up, Lisa at Homesick Texan has a recipe for Bread and Butter Jalapeño pickles buried deep in this post about what constitutes Texas Potato Salad that is a great way to use up a jalapeño pepper bounty if you've got them growing in your garden.

These pickle versions of late summer fireworks are a snap to make even if you have to stop at the store to buy your own peppers. I've had them plain and in potato salad both and now can't wait to try them rough chopped atop brats to munch on while we celebrate the start of UT football season in a few weeks.

Speaking of football, for those of you still in the mix, Happy First Week of School! I may not be packing lunches or waving kids off to the bus any longer but I remember what that was like as if it was only yesterday.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Right this minute, I've got the car to load up. I'll be back with more fun before too long. Bye for now!

You can never....

2010-08-14T11:24:00.000-05:00

Perhaps you know the axiom - You can never be too rich or too thin.

Due to my hoardist tendencies, most of the time around here that saying ends up reconfigured into some version of "You can never have too many....." fill-in-the-blank with whatever it is I am attempting to defend having many-more-than-one-of at the time.

I'll start with our version of hoarder's Switzerland - a group I have yet been called upon to defend. Bird feeders. Who doesn't love birds? We sure ~~does~~ do! We have five bird feeders of various types in various spots along with all sorts of plants growing that support berries and seeds various species like to visit in season.

No problems so far. However.... For various reasons we are heading into a period requiring quite a bit of deck clearing around here which has put a very large smile on Hub's face. At the prospect of my finally getting rid of all sorts of ~~supplies~~ clutter he can barely contain his glee. To his way of thinking, Less is not only More, Less is BETTER. Much, MUCH better.

My completely rational response to the idea of getting rid of m/any of my treasures (once my head stopped swimming and I could hear again over the pounding of my pulse in my ears) was to immediately begin defending in my head some of what might (and I cannot emphasize this too strongly) MIGHT appear to the uninitiated as exemplars of excess.

I started snapping photos resulting in a sort of primer of plenitude. Here, in no particular order, a tip of the iceberg look at a few things I believe I can never have "too many" of....

Colorful Paper Drink Umbrellas

Cats Stretching in the Sun

Homegrown Tomatoes

Library Books

Artist's Brushes

Souvenir Plates

Bluebonnets that don't know it is August

A note of clarification. Nobody is talking about getting rid of our cats, or any of the flowers in the garden beds. Certainly not the tomato plants now they are finally showing signs of recognizing what they are and behaving accordingly. These all simply caught my eye as I was wandering around thinking to myself - "what can I never, ever have too many of?".

My list could go on indefinitely (kinds of mustard... mismatched wine glasses...) hence the happy anticipation on the part of certain people around here who would gratefully see more actual space in our places.

What about you? Are there objects/comestibles you adore in profusion? No need to defend your choice(s), we're all friendly 'round these parts. It is time to rally, fellow hoarders and hoardettes - speak up and tell the world! What can YOU never have too many of?

What is strong?

2010-08-07T09:49:00.000-05:00

I admit it freely. After an epic ankle injury in June left me washed up on the shoreline of my bed where it was all I could do to surround myself with water, eyeglasses, salty snacks and stacks of library books, my world began to simultaneously expand and contract.

The expansion came courtesy of a host of new fiction releases, mixed in with a few older novels that had previously escaped my notice. The contractions happened, relentlessly, whenever I was not fully immersed in somebody else's fictional world. Each time I was yanked reluctantly out of my book back into reality, my universe abruptly resized itself to the admittedly swollen limitations of one bruised and battered ankle and its attendant foot.

Weak turned into weeks. I was barely mobile, reduced to short seemingly treacherous bursts of crutch assisted transport from bed to bathroom, bed to couch. At day's end, I would gather myself for one last nerve wracking journey, returning gratefully to the safety of my own land of counterpane.

I spent countless stretches of time staring at my ankle critically, assessing its state obsessively, wondering in panicked bursts at first "if?" miserably lapsing into "how long?" it would be before I could reliably put weight on the formerly injured areas and simply, confidently, walk.

Eventually I began to dream in crutches. Many of these dreams featured some break in the action where I would, momentarily distracted, leave my crutches to one side, turn and begin to walk on my own. I would wake exuberant, eagerly opening my eyes only to be stopped short by the sight of them, my crutches, sadly still quite necessary, stacked bedside for when I would arise.

How often I was reduced to tearful self pity by this situation will remain unnumbered. How many times I sat immobilized, using every shred of energy available to stifle a snarl when a heartfelt "thank you!" was more appropriately in order is, appropriately, my solo burden to bear.

Truth be told? That is the worst of it. Not the pain, or even the embarrassment of acknowledging my own stubborn stupidity as the cause of the accident that resulted in the injury. It was my utter inability to do for myself, the complete reliance upon others to do for me what I used to do for myself, that rapidly reduced my universe to the size of one very swollen ankle.

As the weeks crawled by I began, only because it was forced upon me, to slowly absorb some of the cruel lessons of living less than fully able in a busily distracted world.

Self awareness can be a bitch.

Now, finally, I am able to put some weight upon my ankle. For very short spurts, if I am careful, I can actually wobble from here to there without using the trip sticks. I can, for the first time in nearly two months, actually carry my own cup of coffee, my own glass of water, from here to there. All by myself. Without asking, without worrying about imposing, without waiting. I decide I want to, so I do. Just. Like. That.

Increasing mobility of course also means the return to chores, the resumption of meal preparation and laundry loads and grocery store runs. All of these functions slowed, some of them still requiring family sherpa assists to avoid re-injury, but each of them representing a victory of reasserted independence I no longer take completely for granted.

I would like to say I learned lessons that will stay with me, to confidently state my impatience and tendencies to rush, to urge "hurry" have all melted away from this newly refined, shinier version of me.

I doubt it will be so for long. It is much more likely as the days pass, as the ankle gets stronger and the hesitance to step out, to step up, or down or over an obstacle dissolves into a growing sense of security, that I will simply revert to my previously presumptuous ways.

Maybe I have seen enough, lived through enough exposure to the harsh experience of enforced dependence to have softened a rough edge or two permanently. Maybe now I will look, not with pity, but with new appreciation for how very tough a person must actually be to allow for a life that relies in ways fully upon others.

Maybe I won't continue to assess strength as represented or measured by the ability to do for myself all on my own. Real strength, I am coming to see, is at least partly about the ability to allow others to do for me and not consider myself diminished by that.

Wrong footed

2010-07-04T16:21:00.000-05:00

OK - it has been long enough since my ladder dismount foolishness that I'd thought I'd be hobbling around on my own by now - but apparently I misunderestimated the damage done by my leadfooted leap and am still required to use crutches.

Which, OK, have been sanity savers on the one hand, but on the other hand....crutches are no fun, not nearly as desirable as I'd always thought in elementary school when anybody in my class ever needed them.

Crutches are not as padded as they appear, the padding they do have makes my hands smell funny no matter how many times I wash them, and I am longing for the day when we can decide where the heck we will try to store them, which will mean I have no more use for them at long last.

In the meantime, I am developing coping mechanisms while simultaneously enriching all our local fast food merchants as we turn to them for nightly sustenance.

And predictably enough, as much as I gritch and complain when dinner prep duties are calling I am now remembering a lesson I've learned at the front and back end of many a move. When I MUST eat fast food day after day, it gets tiresome. Very very tiresome.

And another larger lesson to undergird the whole "wait until I have somebody to hold a ladder no matter how irritated I am by the smoke detector bleeping when the battery needs replacing" has been this one. When I am not one hundred percent? I am not loads of fun for company. I get even more impatient than usual and the teensy areas where I feel I still might exert control enlarge to become my universe, reducing me to a very unbecoming overfocused snappishness if I am not extremely careful. And some times, even when I am trying to be extremely careful.

So OK universe. ~~Ankle~~ Uncle! My foot is getting better, a teensy bit every day. My lessons are learned. I pinky swear. Just let this ankle finally unswell all the way please and let the last bit of aurora anklealys bruising fade away for all time thank you. Allow me to step out sans the aluminum sticks of aggravation, walk along under my own steam, bearing my own weight, and I am pretty sure I can and will hold on to everything this experience has taught me for the rest of my days.

I just might even remember to be grateful for the chance to cook my own dinners with the food I choose in my own kitchen again.

At least for a couple of days.

At any rate. Happy 4th of July all. Hope you are healthy, bipedal, happy, and that you are celebrating with the people you love.

Speaking of steps....

2010-06-22T11:27:00.000-05:00

I won't be taking any anytime soon apparently.

After a particularly graceless exodus off a high ladder perch yesterday, I landed awkwardly (read:heavily) on one foot and thoroughly cranked my ankle.

We are talking a sprain of epic proportions unfortunately which may see me stuck with one non-weight bearing leg for quite a while.

Today I am ensconced on my side of the bed, using the Hub's laptop, crutches tucked to one side, pillows lip gloss, water glass, OTC anti-inflammatories and book all crowding the bedside table.

Me being the imaginative type, I spent much of yesterday assessing the pain and swelling wondering anxiously if I'd "only" sprained my ankle or if I'd also broken bones and/or done tendon damage. Today the pain is both better and worse, having settled into an area I am trying NOT to decide indicates something more than a sprain.

Oh - did you not know I am a free lance faux physician in my spare time? Yeah - I went to the lifetime school of observational Mommy medicine and though I am short a degree OR admitting privileges at any health care facilities I can at least claim I have not killed anybody under my direct care.

Fear not - I am monitoring my situation extremely closely and at least know enough not to research online the consequences of my fall/injury as part of the process. I'll want a nap later which won't be possible if I am fighting a full fledged anxiety attack hatched by the horrors so often unveiled by web searches for medical information. I have loving family around to fetch and fuss over me and help me keep my decision tree reasonable as to when it might be time to head out for professional intervention. You know, of the went-to-school and got their degree type physicians.

For now I am laying low (except for that one elevated leg) and I'll be back in a few days, hopefully with glowing reports documenting an astonishingly rapid recovery.

I'll leave you with this one thought for today... Do not for one moment take for granted the ease with which you currently are able to push away from a table and chair, stand, and walk around your home/office/environs to do the thousands of things you do every day. That mobility is an absolute gift, one you should (and at least I now do) cherish for as long as it is yours.

Onward!

One Small Step for

2010-06-14T10:59:00.000-05:00

summer kind.

According to all the usual indices, it is full on summer time here. School is out, the forecast keeps rotating between 95 and 75 for our predicted high and low temperatures, and on the interweb I see more and more recipes featured of the outdoors grilling and picnic treat variety.

Which is fine by me. Foods that will tolerate being made ahead and transported to a gathering are among my favorites. Including the upcoming beauties that we made not for a picnic, but to have as a special treat to celebrate the return of an HBO favorite to the lineup.

Vamps and shape shifters rejoice...taken from a recent copy of Martha Stewart Living I'd like to introduce you to the delights of.... Marshmallow Cookie Sandwiches.

Based upon the original Tennessee Moon Pie (introduced in 1917), the recipe graciously allows either the use of home prepared or store bought graham crackers.

Y'all may recall I noted previously I have several bags of specialty flour already languishing in the freezer, so I opted to go for a box of honey grahams from the store.

Truth be told, even if you go the home made route you'll end up with squares rather than that evocative moon shape, but the eating is no less delicious for all the corners involved.

We started these fairly early in the afternoon noting the marshmallows require at least three hours to set. It was fun working with the block of set marshmallow. We took to heart the hint to use powdered sugar on our knife to help get a clean cut and once we got used to the plasticity of the mass, it was a kick cutting the squares and then powdering the edges to make them easier to handle. Cutting them was almost as much fun as eating them...

So without further ado, the recipe for Not-So-Moon-Shaped-Pies. The only change I would suggest, especially if you go the route of store bought grahams? As rich as these flavor combinations are I think a pair of single crackers providing a smaller rectangle would make a more reasonable serving size. That way you'd end up with 18 one by two inch rectangular treats, rather than 9 two inch square behemoths. Either way, you'll be drawling and drooling up a storm.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

Vegetable oil cooking spray, for pan
2 envelopes unflavored gelatin (about 2 tablespoons)
2/3 cup cold water
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup light corn syrup
Coarse salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Confectioners' sugar, for cutting
9 store-bought graham crackers, split in half, or 18 homemade graham cookies
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted
1 cup salted, roasted peanuts, chopped

Directions:

Coat a 9-inch square baking pan with cooking spray; line with parchment. Sprinkle gelatin over 1/3 cup water in the bowl of a mixer; let stand for 5 minutes.
Heat granulated sugar, corn syrup, remaining 1/3 cup water, and 1/8 teaspoon salt in a saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until syrup reaches 238 degrees on a candy thermometer, about 5 minutes.
Whisk gelatin in mixer on low speed, adding syrup in a slow, steady stream down side of bowl. Whisk, gradually increasing speed to high, until almost tripled in volume, about 8 minutes. Whisk in vanilla. Transfer to baking pan. Smooth top. Let stand until set, at least 3 hours.
Cut out nine 2 1/2-inch square marshmallows using a cookie cutter or a knife dipped in confectioners' sugar. Dip surface of crackers into chocolate to coat, and transfer to parchment-lined baking sheets. Refrigerate until set, about 10 minutes. Sandwich marshmallows between crackers, chocolate sides in.
Dip half of each sandwich into chocolate, on the diagonal; sprinkle with peanuts, and transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Refrigerate until set, about 10 minutes.

Battle:Dinner Every Night

2010-06-02T12:13:00.000-05:00

I was enjoying what passes for "our version" of fried chicken for dinner while watching a recorded episode of Iron Chef America recently.

After the episode's secret ingredient was revealed (cauliflower) challenger John Fraser announced his decision to forgo the assistance of sous chefs, prompting Iron Chef Michael Symon to do the same.

During the course of the hour the two chefs were allotted to cook, it was stated over and over (and over) how especially difficult this battle would be for them, working as they were to prepare the five dishes required to present to the judges all ALONE.

Finally I could stand it no longer and said aloud "This is something most Moms do every night for dinner and nobody makes a big deal about it".

I heard in response the somewhat expected objections - this was a different level of cooking than expected for home dinner, it was a contest, there were judges to please, etc..

I'll yield the points to some extent, I do accept there are differences, but I stick with my original assertion.

Every night, in homes around the world, people sit down to eat a meal that was prepared for them by somebody who probably spent around an hour to make various dishes that they will most certainly be judged for.

Maybe a little longer than an hour if dessert is included. This peach cobbler is a favorite of ours but it takes an hour in the oven so I like to bake it ahead of time.

Meal to meal, these home cooks will probably also hear all sorts of opinions expressed about what they've cooked. [If not out loud, then the plates going back to the kitchen, with or without food left on them will pretty much say it all.]

The biggest difference I can see between home cooks and the occupants of Kitchen Stadium is that the home cooks probably also shopped (and paid) for all the ingredients and they will be the ones expected to clean up any messes made (well, eventually).

There are no lifetime bragging rights or special recognition that goes with the success of any of a home cook's efforts AND in around 24 hours no matter how good a job they did before, they will be expected to do it all over again.

I'd like to see the Iron Chefs tackle that challenge.

Once in a blue moon...

2010-05-23T13:48:00.001-05:00

You'd be forgiven if you mistakenly thought the moon in the header was a reference to how often I'd be posting here.

All will be forgiven however when you get a load of what I've got to share with you today. Maybe not quite as exciting as finding out where the cardinals are nesting this year, but close, very close.

I realize the Food Network has become a bit passé in certain circles, and in a little over a week the idea that channel has become too old school may (or may not) be reinforced by the debut of the newer, presumably hipper Cooking Channel (set to replace the Fine Living Channel on Memorial Day). I read somewhere the Food Network owns the Cooking Channel so I doubt one will take the other on in any confrontational way, but browsing the shows pitched the Cooking Channel seems to feature a series of younger, attractive faces. Doing what exactly, we will soon discover.

My point (and I did have one at some point back there) is that I started out a long time ago watching cooking shows on Public Television and so eventually when the Food Network came around it was an easy sell for me. Whether or not it has since become too commercial or has been eclipsed by other network offerings or web based enterprises I cannot say other than to voice my own subjective opinion. What I do know is that I still enjoy getting their "Recipe of the Day" email updates.

Whether or not I ever prepare the actual dish featured it almost always gets me looking at some recipe somewhere, and as a result, something to eat happens here at Austin Agrodolce.

Because whether or not I am posting, we sure enough are eating here.

So what do I have up my oven mitt today? None other than Chinese Five Spice Pineapple Carrot Cupcakes.

CUP CAKES! Planning ahead a little, what wouldn't be fun about cupcakes on the upcoming holiday weekend? You can grill up a storm, swim, spit watermelon seeds all you want, but if you want folks to know it is a special occasion, if you wish to make the point that by golly there is something different about this long weekend as opposed to any other, then in my book somebody is going to need to trot out some little iced cakes. Pronto.

As is usual around here, "somebody" means me. But before running these up the Memorial Day flagpole for the entire family, a test batch was called for.

I already had a large bunch of organic carrots hanging around the crisper bin so once I located a can of crushed pineapple and that neglected bottle of Chinese Five Spice I was good to go.

I broke my own rule about sticking strictly to the recipe for the first try and substituted organic apple sauce for the oil. Heeding the comments posted on the recipe site I decided to make half the icing recipe, and as it turns out, these were both good calls.

The cake has a tendency to stick to the cupcake liners a bit, (which may or may not have to do with not using oil) but I don't mind going to the extra "effort" to get that last bit of cake off the paper, especially when it means I don't have the cooking oil calories to fret over. Hell, if I accidentally eat some paper I'll just count it as extra fiber.

Following that same line, I used Neufchatel rather than cream cheese for the icing, just to stave off the idea that eating cup cakes during bathing suit season somehow represents flawed thinking. Pffft. That's what those extra big "beach" towels are made for anyway, am I right?

You'll note (if you read the recipe that is) this calls for 1/4 cup of crushed pineapple. The smallest can I can find is 8 ounces, so rather than make a double batch of cupcakes I used up the rest of the fruit in a batch of carrot salad. I mean, once you've got the grater out and your counter is already looking a bit like a carrot exploded there, why not? Grate a few extra carrots for some salad and you can shave a few minutes off that upper body workout (at least for one arm....).

So here I sit, my late lunch ready and waiting for me but not quite wanting to eat it because let's face it, I couldn't post about the cupcakes and not at least TRY ONE now could I? Of course not - that would just be foolishness beyond measure.

I mean what if the recipe yielded nothing but a dozen bits of nastiness? I wouldn't want to come back here, take the post down, apologize, blah blah blah. So yeah, I tried one. Before lunch. Without icing because again, who wants a bowl of icing with only icky cakes to put it on? What luck that the cakes turn out to be delicious, moist, and just spicy enough to be really interesting. After my not so bold initial recipe departures, the only other change I'd contemplate would be to add chopped nuts (pecans being my first choice). A bit of crunch is never a bad thing in a cupcake and after all, these are already carroty pineappley good for you.

Speaking of yields, when I followed the directions to fill the pan 3/4 full, I ended up with 17 cupcakes rather than 12. I don't know if I have some mutant pan or if the silly thing shrank in the wash or something, but there you have it. 17 cupcakes (16 after taste testing). And that halved recipe of icing provided on the Food Network site provided gracious plenty to ice every single cake with just enough left in the pan for me to get two good finger swipes in and thereby totally obliterate what was left of my appetite.

Oh - you might note a couple of paint swatches and a stick in the last photo? The reason for the not so much posting lately is that we've been painting our living room and home office and then taking advantage of the chance to rearrange all the art in both rooms. We did it slowly, taking lots of breaks, mostly occasioned by the need to oh so carefully disconnect the television components and computer equipment. But we are all done now, everything is up and running as it should be, only now surrounded by gorgeous COLOR.

Which I gotta say, makes me a happy happy gal. Five Spice Pineapple Carrot Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. Don't wait for a holiday weekend or a paint job finished to try them, but if you do? You won't be sorry!

Yes we are still eating...

2010-05-07T10:50:00.042-05:00

but life has been on something of a "need to eat RIGHT NOW - no time for plate styling or photos" schedule of late.

I lack photos to persuade but nevertheless highly recommend to you the following for some tried and true fine eating:

Simply Recipes Blender Hollandaise sauce (for whatever your version of Eggs Benedict needs might be)

Garlic Roasted Chicken from the Food Network (I used bone in thighs and white wine rather than vinegar)

Tacos of Carnitas Roasted with Orange, Milk and Pepper from Cookstr

We had our tacos with a version of Austin Gastronome's Salsa Verde

Meanwhile, tomato plants are (finally!) in the ground and I am back into Chief Bug Smasher/Waterer territory for the season.

And speaking of the season: loquats are a-ripening.

In order to get our fair share before the bugs/birds/squirrels have taken all the lower fruit I can reach from my wobbly ladder perch, this year I picked a bit early and will now depend upon the displayed low tech indoors ripening technique.

Overripe bananas plus not so ripe loquats plus a plastic bag equals WONDERFULLY RIPE FRUIT FOR JAM! I hope, anyway.

That's Plan A and while the loquats huff ethylene and carbon I will be methodically gathering up jam jars and checking our supplies of lids and rims.

I'll have to see how much usable loquat fruit I end up with before deciding if I can make all loquat jam or will need to mix in strawberries or peaches.

I admit it is a lot of pitting and peeling for a fairly small usable amount per fruit. Regardless, the novelty grabs me annually and I love having home made jam to pull out on demand (even though the making of it gives me night terrors). Having homemade jam around makes me smile - every single time. So worth it.

Is there something you will go to extra trouble to do or make just because it pleases you to be the person who will do that? Some special sauce or quick bread or cake or dish that you make because you like what it says about you to do so? Fess up in the comments - we all want to know!

Now it's working....again!

2010-05-05T09:38:00.000-05:00

The saga continues: The Hub (which must certainly stand for Hero of Unanticipated Breakdowns) determined the cause of the garage refrigerator failure and even better than that - he repaired it. (!!!)

Let it be said here we are not useless, but we are by no means ultra handy types. We are bright enough between us, we are willing to work hard and get our hands dirty and our Daddies taught us both various skill sets to bring to bear on the home front.

There are however repairs beyond our purview, and major appliance repairs typically fall smack into that category. This was the lovely exception to that rule and YAY to Hub for bothering (eventually) to check the once broken refrigerator for the possibility of the need for a simple repair.

Then double YAY for following through with that repair requiring him to spend a certain amount of his time off straining away lying on his side on the garage floor when he could have kept his mouth shut and simply walked away. I'd have been none the wiser. This man, my friends, is a keeper!

We called the store to cancel our purchase and were told since it had not yet been 24 hours since the order had been placed that we'd reached them in time. As we did not get the automated call later on telling us when to expect a delivery, we relaxed, feeling all due diligence had been exercised.

Story over, right? Happy endings all around!

That glowy warm slightly self congratulatory feeling lasted until around 8:30 AM the following morning when a delivery guy rang our doorbell. I answered and immediately noted a new, no longer wanted or needed refrigerator already unloaded from the truck, glinting in the sun at the curbside, as the guy asked me "where do you want your new refrigerator installed?".

I apologized for their trouble and informed him of the repair and cancelled order. Somehow, though the guy managed to be absolutely polite, I felt he failed to share our glee over repairing our refrigerator in the nick of time. I also got the distinct impression this was not the first time an order had been cancelled and the delivery guys were the last to know.

Such is life in the no-passing lane I suppose. Store's bad, not ours, but still I kept apologizing.....

In the interest of karmic studies I also immediately went to check the repaired refrigerator to make sure it had not abruptly stopped working while I was sending its replacement back to the warehouse.

Phew. Lights on, cool air intact. I am calling this a WIN for the home team.

Now it's working....

2010-05-01T17:56:00.000-05:00

now it's not.

That is the punch line to a tired old joke about women and cars and windshield wipers, but it sums up a revealing episode in the life of the AustinAgrodolce household.

As I was hunter gathering in the auxiliary garage refrigerator for dinner ingredients, the refrigerator light went out.

No worries - I've replaced many an appliance bulb in my day. AND we happened to have an extra on hand.

I fetched it and replaced it and nothing. Nothing but gloom and food in there. Then I noticed there are TWO light bulbs in that refrigerator. Hmmmm. That still didn't mean the new light bulb ought not work once it was screwed in. But it wasn't.

And what are the odds TWO light bulbs would burn out at the exact same time? It might seem logical that both bulbs turn on together and worked the same amount of time but in my experience that just never happens simultaneously. Light bulb union rules or something. You can put three bulbs into one fixture and each one will burn out on its own schedule.

I checked the freezer. Heyyyy - the light bulb in the freezer was burned out too?

A tiny light FINALLY went on in my dinner prep distracted brain. The refrigerator wasn't working.

As in broken. As in a lot of food was going to go south as the temperatures slowly climbed.

I called in the heavy artillery. The Hub checked the plug. No help there. All plugged in. He checked the light bulb. Nope. Having a man screw that bulb in was no help at all. The refrigerator was still kerflunken.

After determining there was no way to arrange for same day delivery of a replacement refrigerator (and even if we could borrow a truck to fetch one home today there'd be haul off to arrange so we bailed on that idea) we bit the bullet, consulted the runes, the tea leaves, Consumer Reports and ordered ourselves a new backup refrigerator to be delivered Monday.

I busied myself moving the expensive proteins into the kitchen refrigerator while The Hub wondered aloud (because surely he wasn't speaking directly to ME) how I'd fit it all in seeing as both refrigerators and freezers had been pretty doggone full to start with.

Little did he know that I had begun storing nuts and grains in our freezers and not too surprisingly, since I don't keep my freezer in proper order to be able to easily see what I already have on hand, I have (cough) one or two extra packages of almonds and pecans on hand. I figured I could take out all the non-immediately-perishable items from both freezers, move the proteins and frozen foods over to the kitchen, and the only leftover consideration here is that I now have two frozen pizzas that have become "what's for dinner tonight".

But my point here, (and I really have had one), is that putting all those nuts and bags of barley and polenta and coconut into one place has shown me that I may have a teensy OverStocking problem. There are a couple of bags of stuff in there that I am pretty sure I might never use. Sad but true. I mean, if I can't remember buying the barley (or why I thought I needed it in the first place) I am fairly certain the odds are low I'll actually NEED much less want barley anytime soon. And why I've ended up with three bags of black eyed peas is a bit of a mystery. We like them just fine but three bags? Really?

So. It is a new day (or afternoon anyway) and a new dawn and I am feeling filled with resolve. I will clear out the stuff I know I'll never use (once more with feeling) and toss out any foil wrapped packets I cannot identify or remember. I will make room in my freezer once again for the food we actually will EAT and I will stick to the program to only buy items I intend to serve for dinner that same week.

As we all know, the first step to solving a problem is recognizing that it exists. Boy oh boy do I recognize this one. It is spilling out of a cooler onto the kitchen floor as I type this.

How about you? Your refrigerator all neat and organized and filled with foods you use up regularly? No random ingredients or impulse buys in there taking up space? (and if not maybe I can borrow some of your space...just temporarily......)

Wowsers

2010-05-01T08:52:00.000-05:00

Nothing like that last post date to burst my fantasy bubble it has "not been that long" since I wrote here.

I am going to blame allergies and more specifically, my allergy medication for that lapse because, well, it is true, and because if you yourself have or if you love anybody who has serious seasonal allergies you know the other side of that truth. You realistically have to cut a body extra slack when the meds they are taking so they can breathe without sneezing make it so they have to fight to stay upright and awake.

Dinner, coming when it does, requires a bit of extra energy and cleverness be exerted at what is typically the lowest point in any garden variety allergy season day. I might be hungry, I might not, but what is a given is that as long as there are oak pollen thingies piled on the ground I am scrambling to find one good solid reason not to succumb to the strongest possible urges to begin a nap around 5:45 every afternoon.

So while we have indeed been eating something for dinner every single evening, there was not much in the way of New! or Exciting! to report.

Until yesterday.

Oak season is grinding to a close and we have timidly spent a few hours with doors and windows open to fresh breezes, experimentally confirming our impression that It Might Be Safe To Breathe Outdoor Air again.

Partly to celebrate that, and partly because whenever we get close to May we start talking about ChefSon's birthday and whenever we start talking about ChefSon's birthday the topic of Lemon Cake comes up, LSG decided to forage around on the interweb for a better lemon cake recipe.

And I say "better" because we'd had a favorite recipe for lemon cake previously (Lemon Quick Cake). It had served us well for the better part of three decades but folks it is decidedly old school. This recipe relies upon a full cup of oil, a box mix, a package of lemon jello plus lemon extract to keep it moist and pack in that lemon flavor.

The old cake only got better upon standing which we rarely were able to test past the three day mark. It was that lemony delicious. But. That said, it was also pretty much exactly the kind of recipe leading to precisely the kind of cooking and eating we aren't indulging in around here any longer.

So long story longer, LSG found a fabulous Barefoot Contessa recipe for a lemon cake that had cropped up on blogs all around the internet, with reportedly delectable results, and the quest for a new lemon cake recipe was potentially at an end.

We made the bundt cake version of the recipe (as you sophisticated types can tell from the photos) and despite all the venting in the comments on some sites, had no problems with the cake absorbing the lemon syrup that was lovingly applied before the glaze went on. You can find Smitten Kitchen's version of the recipe right here.

Go ahead and check it out. I'll wait....

Yup, that is correct. This is a cake with not only three quarters of a cup lemon juice, but also three quarters of a cup of lemon zest in it. It doesn't stop there though. This is a cake that also has a lemon simple syrup basted on immediately after coming out of the pan and then is enveloped in a confectioner's sugar/lemon juice glaze. The lemony goodness in this simply does not stop. But is all lemon lemon.

No extract. No lemon gelatin mix. Just wonderfully bright, tartly sweet natural lemon.

If the old recipe was denoted a Lemon Quick Cake, this might be considered a Lemon Slow Cake. All that zesting and basting takes a fair amount of time but on this side of the dessert plate, I'd say it is well worth the trouble. Creaming two sticks of butter with two cups sugar nearly undid our hand mixer but LSG coaxed it all the way to creamy just short of actually burning out that teensy motor. And we're SO glad she did.

This is one of those recipes I'd read through and probably shrug it off, thinking "too much trouble for me". But now I have sous cheffed for LSG while she did all the heavy lifting and more importantly now I have tasted the results? I am one hundred percent sold.

No one step of this recipe is all that difficult and the fact this cake would only improve by being made a day ahead makes it ideal for those take along a cake situations when you want to wow the crowd. And wow it will, by golly. Wow it will.

Postscript: We used up the last of our Meyer Lemons for this project, in addition to a handful of organic lemons bought specifically for this cake. In this cake recipe, with all that zesting going on, I would recommend only using organic fruit to avoid potentially loading your cake up with pesticide residue.

While we are on the topic

2010-04-09T08:32:00.000-05:00

Speaking of food photography, did you know Saveur announced the winners of their First Annual Food Blog Awards recently? (neither did I!)

No, I didn't make the cut, wasn't even nominated truth be told, but once I saw who was on the list all became clear. These bloggers are the cream of the crop. These are the blogs you'd want to read on a desert island (providing you had full access to your computer there and maybe a great desert/farmer's market....).

One of the categories was Best Food Photography, and the winner there, Smitten Kitchen, also snagged a Best Individual Post win for her take in January 2007 on Hibernation Fare.

I read Smitten Kitchen regularly and would agree the photography and writing are both inspiring, though she will go to an awful lot more trouble than I will to create, or in some cases, recreate a dish. The few dishes of hers I do attempt are always wonderful and even the majority of time spent just reading her posts is thoroughly enjoyable.

Another long time favorite blog/blogger, Homesick Texan scored a win for "Regional Cuisine". Represent, y'all!

Just as some folks might make a point of watching all the Academy Award nominated "best" films year to year, or read anything snagging a New York Times bestseller status, I recommend to you trying out the blogs on Saveur's winner list. Not a clunker in the bunch. The list with links will take you all sorts of good places you might not have even known you wanted to go.

The full list of winners is right here. Enjoy!

Is The Unexamined Meal Worth Eating?

2010-04-07T13:58:00.002-05:00

I can't put my interweb finger on it but I'm certain I've posted here before about how I've been writing down on my refrigerator calendar what we eat for dinner every night.

The process has been revelatory to me in terms of how often we really eat take out food, for instance. Reviewing the entries helps me avoid the sneaking suspicion I am cooking the same three dishes over (and over and over...). It is a simple practice, one that is easy to stick to since even if I forget to record anything for a while it only requires me remembering what I ate for dinner for a few days in a row to catch back up.

LawSchoolGirl tops that. Periodically she keeps a food diary, recording every single thing she eats and tallying up the calorie total day to day. When I asked she took the time to show me several sites set up to help folks get started, the idea being that we often eat more than we realize, and/or keeping a record helps people stick to a particular intake level.

That sort of discipline is well and good, but when it comes to keeping a food record, my E for Effort currently goes hands down to Javier Garcia, featured in a recent NY Times article entitled "First Camera, Then Fork".

Garcia has photographed everything he has eaten for the past five years. Snacks included.

That's a lot of photographs.

Apparently the trend is spreading. People are sharing not only what they cooked, but also what they are eating, and they are doing so via every available social media outlet.

I find it fascinating enough I submitted my own shot of the last bit of Brazilian Cheese Bread I'd baked to the interactive feature at the Times where they are posting photos solicited from readers.

I'll hold off adding "featured photographer in the NYT" to my resumé for the time being as my shot hasn't shown up yet and I've had it with obsessively re-checking.

Honestly, while I capture most of our initial forays into recipe or food categories here on the blog, I'd say most of what I eat remains unchronicled so far (you're welcome!).

During the course of maintaining AustinAgrodolce there have been dishes I would have blogged about but either forgot to take or at times made a conscious decision not to stop to take photos. In my opinion reading about a recipe without any photos included can quickly veer towards tedious. So for me, no photo typically=no blog post.

And I decided early on not to take photos in restaurants. Even before the economy tanked most places I know had already put in as many tables as would physically fit and in close quarters I think flash photos are intrusive.

Your thoughts? Does the idea of looking at other people's meals pique your curiosity or does that sort of food one updishship leave you cold? Do you regularly share photos of food you eat with your friends via posts or tweets or facebook updates? Have you noticed people taking photos of their food while dining out? Did you find it irksome?

I'll never be as methodical as Garcia and just can't see myself happily whiling away the hours on Flickr checking out "I Ate This". That said, it could be visually fascinating to chronicle one meal a day, just for grins. How long before it ceased being fun and started becoming an obsession is anybody's guess.

Catching Up

2010-04-03T10:34:00.000-05:00

I'll let the photo cue you on how busy I feel it has been around here lately.

While I can't (won't?) make a good accounting for my waking hours, I promise you I yet fall into a chair at the end of them, satisfied I've earned my rest despite the lack of a checklist worthy recitation of accomplishments.

Nonetheless, as promised, to follow is a report on three new recipes tried out recently, all of which have both ease of preparation and delicious results to recommend them.

First up to bat an "Easy Brazilian Cheese Bread" from Elise at Simply Recipes.

I must confess many days I am drawn to recipes that include the word "easy" in their title. If I ever find myself desiring something more along the lines of "Difficult Brazilian Cheese Bread" I'll know it is time to back away, s- l -o -w -l -y, from the oven mitts.

The recipe is here and I will say this about that. I subbed in a mixture of dairy products because I realized I'd run out of the preferred milk for our morning coffee the next day and didn't want to make a milk run. The bread turned out great despite my cobbling together lowfat buttermilk and cream, so feel free to play a little with that component if you must. And next time I'm determined to try an even sharper cheese than the Queso Fresco though I give it props for melting into the batter so gracefully.

The recipe does require tapioca flour however. Tapioca flour has a tendency to absorb more liquids than other flours will and without that, this recipe won't work. And, having made one batch I can vouch for the use of a regular muffin pan with wells filled 1/4 full if your mini muffin pan is at the cleaners, say. Your breads won't puff in the larger pan, mine actually got these keen holes in the bottom which I found enchanting, but they'll taste just as good.

And one final note (really a lot to say about an easy recipe, yes?) is that these breads are indeed best eaten the same day. They will keep and reheat but will lose the crunch after the first day and revert to full on chewy bits, which I don't mind at all, but is not for everybody.

Next I will recommend to you a recipe I originally found on the Serious Eats site as part of their French in a Flash series for Dijon Chicken.

I tweaked this recipe just a bit because I used my large electric skillet start to finish. I could explain why but trust me it was the way to go under my circumstances. I used thighs rather than drumsticks, and rather than dump all the oil out and start with new between the first couple of steps I rather emptied the skillet of all but one remaining tablespoon of oil.

Additionally, on the advice of ChefSon, I thinly sliced rather than chopped my garlic cloves.

Otherwise I followed the recipe as written with wonderful results. This makes a sufficient quantity of sauce to thoroughly envelop a side vegetable or starch as you desire and believe me, once you get a taste of this you WILL so desire. I served this with oven baked polenta, the third selection in our hat trick of recipes for today. The rich dijon chicken sauce and creamy polenta were lick your plate good together.

The recipe for the polenta was a gift from the LA Times earlier this year and can be found right here. Knowing I was not going to use this as the main course, with some trepidation I halved the recipe and still ended up with enough polenta for 6 people as a side.

Potentially obnoxious sidebar for locals: If you did not see the April Fool's edition of the Austin Chronicle then click here to enjoy what is perhaps the most fun a Longhorn Fan or Anti-Fan either one can have short a national title. To explain a bit for non-locals, UT Football is an economic juggernaut that has flattened educational concerns for going on 4 decades. Now, back to our regularly scheduled post...

While I was being foolish fearless, I reheated and held the polenta I'd made a day ahead for around 90 minutes in a double boiler. I'd read several places that holding polenta at a steady temperature in that moist environment would allow the corn grains to continue to expand and become even more creamy.

Without halving the batch and preparing one in a double boiler and one not, I can't vouch for any difference but I assure you - this polenta was rich, creamy, and never came close to burning or sticking to a pan in either iteration, oven, or stove top.

If the Fear of Stirring has kept you from trying polenta then fear no longer. Simply combine your ingredients, toss them in the oven, and walk away knowing corn wondrousness is in your short term future. I'm already playing with ideas for my leftover three servings. Something sliced and sautéed is my first thought. I'll report back here if I come up with anything blogworthy.

So there you have it - a trio of easy and delicious recipes, home kitchen tested and certified as Allergy Medication Foggy Brain Screw-Up Proof. What more could you ask?

Last but certainly not least, I extend warmest wishes to all my readers, regular or otherwise, with hopes that if you are observing holy days your celebrations will be filled with meaning and your hours will find you surrounded by those you love.

I realize posts here are sporadic. It is the nature of my temperament. I know you have choices as to when and where you click on any given day. I appreciate your persistence in dropping by and hope you will generally find this a good enough place to spend your time. I certainly enjoy your company!

Yes yes

2010-04-01T17:13:00.000-05:00

we are cooking and eating. Several times. Every day.

Today I already made Easy Brazilian Cheese Bread and have Perfect Baked Polenta in the oven as I type.

More to come later on those recipes, and ideally, the mustard chicken that is to go with them for dinner tonight..

In the meantime, something fanciful to entertain while you wait:

Late to the game

2010-03-27T11:12:00.000-05:00

There are times when I consider myself an early adapter, fearlessly leading the way. There are other times when I remain firmly planted in my chair, ducking behind my screen while I watch and wait to see how a process or technique will turn out for nearly everybody in the known webiverse before I'll try it.

Case in point? Oven crisped kale chips.

Kale chips have been absolutely everywhere recently. Over the past six months I am fairly certain I've seen some version of a kale chip recipe on nearly every food site I visit with any regularity.

I remained unmoved. Skeptical it could be so easy to trick entice my family into eating kale in any form.

I'd had kale in my garden for weeks now, but honestly, had been hesitant to use it much. I keep reading how some people absolutely love it while others (and I harbor some concern several of us might fall into this category) find it too assertive tasting.

There are people out there who like arugula but can't quite bring themselves to eat kale. Folks around here are not even huge arugula fans (except for me - I can't get enough of the stuff). ChefSon likes kale, sure, but he'll eat nearly anything these days as long as it is well prepared.

How positive could I reasonably be that the kith and kin I regularly cook for, picky eaters one and all, would warm up to kale?

I think it was after reading 943 comments from Moms who swore their pickiest kid eaters simply love-love-LOVE eating kale when made crispy and salty, that I was finally ready to take the plunge.

Be it so resolved:We will hereby eat some kale and that kale will be in chip form.

Still, enough time had to pass I could determine if any unfortunate aftereffects might develop from enjoying greens rendered into a slightly less healthy yet decidedly more fun snack food. ("Could it be true that those "healthy" kale chips you've been feeding your family have actually been lowering their IQ?! Harming their standardized test scores? Every parent needs to watch our late breaking story as KFUD undercover investigators reveal the secret the kale industry is desperately trying to hide. Film at 11...").

So I waited. No other shoe dropped. No downside developed. Pressure mounted for the AustinAgrodolce household to finally at least try a batch all our own.

With some teensy bit of trepidation I preheated my oven to 300 degrees F.

I harvested some kale, took the tough center ribs out, washed and dried it.

I put it in a bowl, sprinkled in a tablespoon of olive oil and tossed (and tossed and tossed) until at least some oil showed up on part of every leaf.

I spread it all out on a baking sheet, then sprinkled on some kosher salt. Realizing how I've been accused of working for some sort of salt hoarding secret society of late I took a deep breath and salted some more.

I popped the pan into the oven. The recipes I've seen typically have the chips in the heat for about 20 minutes. Some suggest stirring halfway, others do not.

At about 15 minutes I began to smell my kale pretty distinctly so I checked and decided my chips were ready. I used a very curly kale variety and think that may have hastened the process a bit.

I waited for a minute to let the chips cool and tried one.

Mmmmmmmm, y'all. Kale chips!

I have to say - I am intrigued by the way these chips melt in your mouth. I really like the earthy taste combined with that initial crunch and then the salt finish. I think they are almost meaty tasting. I'm pretty much an instant convert here, folks. Now I realize how easy these are I am fairly sure this technique will be a repeater for me even if nobody else cares for kale chips at all. As a matter of fact I am not entirely sure some part of me hopes nobody else will like these so they can be mine! All mine!

The rest of the jury is still out (asleep and/or out of town). Will my pickiest of eaters go for Kale, The Chips? Stay tuned....

PS - if you've seen kale chip making all around the internet and yet remain a bit on the fence as to whether or not you want to try them? I say go for it. This is easy and quick enough to try that even if you don't particularly enjoy the results I doubt you'll resent having at least given it a shot. One particularly inspired use for leftover (ha! as if...) chips is to crumble them over popcorn. What's not to like about that? Crispy chippy bits on popcorn! Double yum.

Now I find myself eyeballing the rest of the greens in our garden and wondering. If kale tastes this good then what about oven crisped arugula chips? Collards? Broccoli greens? Nothing may be safe from a run in the oven after today.

Chips ahoy!

Brrraaaaainsssss!

2010-03-16T10:41:00.000-05:00

A while back I read what may be for me the most compelling reason to eat light(er) and stay fit, ever.

When the zombies come, the reasoning went, and we all know that is not "if" but "when"....when they come, it will be the out of shape fatties that fall first.

To me, appeals to some cryptic nonspecific eventual sense of "feeling healthy" or "living longer" typically fall like the wet clods of reasoning dirt they are when confronted with oh, bacon say, or chocolate brownies with pecans.

The idea of surviving the onslaught of zombies however, now that is something with a little more immediacy, a little more purchase to it. I can totally grasp why I might want to stay a little lighter on my feet in order to put off my own zombification for as long as is humanly possible given the proximity of malls and shopping strips to my neighborhood.

We all know malls and shopping centers are like flystrips to zombies. So while our days surviving the inevitable zombie attack may be fatefully limited, at best we can try to postpone the inevitable. It is the human thing to do.

And while postponing the inevitable, nothing spices that up like a bit of pre-emptive revenge, like, say, eating brains for dinner.

I don't mean actual brains here, I am talking about those Brains of the Vegetable World:Cauliflower Florets.

And I am not talking about your mamby-pamby boiled or steamed versions of cauliflower, nothing in what I am suggesting will require masses of cream or smothering blankets of cheese.

Nope. I am talking about Roasted Cauliflower. Simple. Elegant. Light. Delicious. And centrally to our discussion here today? A dish that will not be weighing you down when you are needing to flee for your life.

Here's the basic drill. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees F.

Rinse well then cut up your cauliflower (a medium head will feed 3-4 depending on the serving size) into individual florets. There will be some teensy pieces, don't worry - those will become the extra-crispy Secret Cook Rewards you get to eat off the pan while plating.

Coat the dried florets in a bowl with 2 tablespoons olive oil, a sprinkling of kosher salt, and some freshly ground black pepper.

Place on a foil lined pan (to make cleaning up a snap), making sure not to crowd the florets.

Roast for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally. I began stirring the first time I began to smell the cauliflower roasting, at about 11 minutes, then stir every 7-8 minutes after that to keep an eye on when to take them out. You want roasted not charred, and the journey from one to the other is a short one.

And there you go! Roasted Cauliflower. Nutty, golden brown, delicious as it is, although some play around with stir-in seasonings like cumin, garlic salt, or red pepper flakes.

Eating roasted cauliflower brains may not serve up a slam dunk as zombification prevention, but until that has been absolutely proven, why take the chance? Your life may hang in the balance.

In the meantime, I am doing copious research because that is just the kind of selfless, dedicated to the science, gal I am.

You're welcome.

Brain image courtesy of WebMD.

Lady Marmalade (Cake!)

2010-03-06T18:33:00.001-06:00

I am somewhat perverse - I'll own up right here and now.

Whenever I know I am not supposed to do something, or for some reason can not do something, that is all I want to do, all I can think about.

Eighteen minutes into a two hour car trip - guess who can't stop thinking about making a pit stop.

I never once brought a bottle of water from home for an airline flight but once they were forbidden? It is all I can think about as I begrudgingly buy a bottle of water every trip now, to take on the plane, which I promise you I almost never did until after they decided bottles of water could harbor some ingredient of terror. Or something...

Anyway, since we have had a delightful vegan guest here for a while, and having heard about another of my daughter's close friends here developing an almond allergy, after reading this non-vegan almond centric cake it is all I have wanted to bake for two days. So today I decided to give it a try.

Because the most fun part of this (yes folks, I put the fun in dysfunctional) is that this cake is supposed to taste best on the third day.

So ideally, you make this cake and then let it sit there, taunting you with its cakey goodness, for three. whole. days.

Marmalade Cake. It came together quite easily, notes in the recipe about working ahead are well worth taking into account, and I found, as did one commenter, that my cake was done well short of the hour mark (45 minutes and it was getting quite brown, pulling away from the edges of the pan and a toothpick came out clean). Yeah. The toothpick already got him some cake but not me. Nope...

It smells verrrry delicious. I am guessing I might be able to wait until tomorrow...morning. Cake for breakfast, anybody?

You boil an organic orange and I used a Meyer lemon from our little tree crop, you toast 6 ounces of almonds then whirl both of them (serially, not at the same time) in the processor then mix them with eggs, sugar, flour, salt and get this - olive oil.

So yeah, this cake is practically GOOD for you. Vitamin C, eggs, olive oil (and yes, well some sugar but...). Cake!

The original recipe can be found here on Orangette's blog, along with comments, and I made this without any substitutions or shortcuts. Hey - I can follow a recipe....

So once it is cooled I will release it from the prison springpan and liberally coat it with powdered sugar. And then wait... But who knows for how long? Three whole days? Smart money votes "no way".

This Too Shall Pass

2010-03-04T13:40:00.002-06:00

Too amazing not to share....

When Events Conspire....

2010-02-25T16:31:00.082-06:00

On the days I am not posting to this or my garden blog either one, under ordinary circumstances (read:full computer access) I am reading other people's blogs. Lots (and lots) of them. Many of them having something to do with growing or cooking food. Or both.

Under that category of Nonposting/Reading days there are two subcategories: 1) Days I read other people's blogs and think to myself "aaaawesome" as I print out recipes to try, and 2) days I read other people's blogs and think to myself "well there you go, I'm glad somebody out there is crazy ambitious enough to try that".

Some recipes are exciting enough, and I'll have the ingredients on hand, so I proceed immediately from my printer to the kitchen.

Other recipes require waiting for a scheduled trip to the store or perhaps a special occasion when I will be motivated to go to just a bit more trouble or expense than usual. Most of the time I simply won't make a trip to the store "just" to pick up one ingredient for a recipe and I've learned not to try most recipes that call for equipment I don't already have. Chances are good, after three decades of home cooking, if I don't already have something, I probably don't really need it.

My idealized recipe is one that uses ingredients I have around routinely, with flavors my family already likes, but in some novel combination that assures elevation to the realm of Repeater.

So recently, when I spotted a recipe for Chipotle Sweet Potato Soup I realized a confluence of events had occurred that was going to reach potential perfection in the form of a pot of soup.

You see, my daughter has one of her oldest friends visiting, who just so happens to be vegan. To protect her privacy I'll call her FreeSpiritGirl. FSG enjoys thrift store hunting as much as I do, so yesterday while introducing her to "my" Goodwill store, it seemed a good portent when she found a brand new article of clothing she'd been needing for quite some time while I found a great soup pot over in housewares, just the size I'd been wanting.

Aside: We will go to certain lengths to accommodate guests around here that we rarely extend to immediate family. Chalk that up to familiarity breeding contempt, or the idea we can bend for a visitor without breaking as opposed to a potentially long term change for family.

At any rate, the Hub, once assured he would not be required to eat vegan for the duration of FSG's visit, has been quite cheerfully willing to try out any number of vegan dishes this week, especially in the form of chocolate chip cookies. ("That's not vegan, he maintained, that's just a really good cookie!".)

This recipe seemed just the right confluence. A way to break in my new soup pot, a way to acknowledge the pleasures of non-carnivorous eating, and a wonderful warm meal, all packed into one. Genius!

Chipotle sweet potato soup

Ingredients:

2 pounds of sweet potatoes (about two large or three skinny ones), peeled and cubed

2 carrots, peeled and diced

2 stalks of celery, diced

1 medium onion, diced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

4 cups of vegetable broth

2-4 chipotles in adobo (depending on your heat tolerance) chopped

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Juice of one lime

1 tablespoon of olive oil

Salt and black pepper to taste

Non-Vegan Option: Sour cream

Cinnamon-chipotle pecans (recipe to follow)

Method: Heat the olive oil on medium low in a large soup pot, and cook the onions, celery and carrot for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and cook for one more minute.

Add the sweet potatoes, broth, chipotles, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg to the pot. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for 20 minutes or until sweet potatoes are tender.

Let the soup cool, and then in batches, purée it in the blender. If you prefer, you can use an immersion blender in the pot instead.

Once the soup has been puréed, stir in the lime juice and add salt and black pepper to taste. Serve topped with some of the chopped cinnamon-chipotle pecans and (optional) a dollop of sour cream. Serves 8.

Cinnamon chipotle pecans

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of coconut oil (non-vegan option: butter)

1 cup of chopped pecans

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon of chipotle powder

Salt to taste

Method: Melt the fat in a skillet on low heat. Add the pecans and stir them until they are covered. Add the cinnamon and chipotle powder and stir to coat. Cook the pecans, stirring occasionally, for ten minutes. Salt to taste.

I made the soup yesterday with plans on serving it today so the flavors had time to throw their own get-acquainted party overnight. I used 3 chipotles, which after tasting I decided is several clicks past "too spicy" for the rest of the family, so for my daughter and Hub I will stir in some dairy to take it down a notch or three. Yes, yes, that will make it non-vegan, but my sweet family aren't vegan now and likely never will be, so no real harm done.

I will make the pecans right before serving so they'll still be warm, and I plan on using coconut oil to keep the nuts on the straight and narrow, vegan wise.

While this was cooking it made my house smell like pumpkin pie - the spices were amazingly aromatic. Now I can barely wait to ladle this into bowls and serve it up to friends and family.

I hope you'll treat yourself to this sooner rather than later. This recipe is cinchy and could be table ready in about an hour if you were in a hurry for something warm and spicy and delicious and healthy for your own lunch or dinner.

You surely won't want to wait for a vegan house guest or a new soup pot to try it. But, just in case you do have either one around your house, then you and this soup need wait no longer. Let serendipity rule.

What I Did for Love...

2010-02-16T17:09:00.002-06:00

I got a very thoughtful emailed heads up from a fellow blogger today indicating the reason I might not have received any comments expressing Valentine's Day wishes on my rosy posey post Sunday was because I had somehow inadvertently tinkered with the comment settings in a not so helpful way.

Truth is, I had not yet checked for comments on that post. Partly I was busy with family plans, but partly I fell prey to the lingering scars of Valentine Days past, particularly one nasty Valentine's Day in elementary school when I first learned about unrequited affection.

My teacher that year may have had her own ghosts of Valentine's Days past (in those days all the elementary school teachers were female). Perhaps she was inexperienced, maybe she was embittered beyond caring, whatever the reason behind it, she did not, as had all my teachers before then and all the teachers after that, clearly insist every student in the class make or bring a valentine for every other student.

In the late 1950's through the 1960's a Valentine's Day student exchange was such common practice juvenile valentine cards were sold in packs of 25 conforming to the state mandated elementary school class size. Each selection featured a slightly larger "To Teacher" version as part of the set. You bought a pack, you signed the back and filled out the "To:_____" on the envelopes with the assistance of an aromatic purple smudged mimeographed list of names sent home by your teacher the week before.

Other than the missing admonition to bring a card for every student, my teacher that year followed the well prescribed routine. At the beginning of February we were told to bring a shoebox from home. We spent our art periods both weeks prior to the 14th swimming among doilies, adrift in a sea of pink and red construction paper provided so we could sufficiently smother our our mail box with gluey hand made hearts and flowers.

This year our teacher stated simply that on the day of our party we would start our studies ten minutes after the morning bell to allow us time to deliver our valentines. She announced further to our mounting excitement we would have punch and cookies provided by our Home Room Mother right before the final bell of the day. This was it, our Valentine's Class Party, during which time we could open our mailboxes in sugary bliss. There were giggles and squeals. A party! At school! The novelty was nearly excruciating.

It would never have occurred to me at that age to buy a full pack of valentine cards and not distribute every last one of them. To buy and not use was unheard of in our home. To leave anybody out intentionally was simply not our way. My brother and I were similarly instructed we could invite everybody [or nobody] to birthday parties. The cruelty, recognized or not, to intentionally select some and ignore others was simply not a feature of The Universe According to My Mom.

That this was not necessarily the case for all my school mates was soon to be discovered.

The day arrived, the party began and it was rapidly apparent that I, among others, did not have as many cards as there were students. Some of my valentines were unsigned, making it impossible to know precisely who had smiled and who had withheld, but glancing around, I, along with a few other girls just savvy enough to know we'd been snubbed, all sat there mutually red faced for an excruciating 10 minutes while we waited for the bell to signal our release.

I learned a lot that year, some of it about arithmetic and capitals, spelling and chief exports. But most of what I remember learning that year was about how cruel the world can be when left to its own devices. I began that year to understand the heart as a vulnerable organ. I was beginning to see how much courage it took to express affection with no guarantee of return.

That trauma aside, I took my lumps and heeded my Mother's philosophy. The best measure of love, she taught us, was if we had given the ones we loved our all, with no thought to what we might gain in return. She insisted love is only love if it is freely given, with no strings and no expectations.

Now, though I try to avoid clichés, I tend to go all out for Valentine's Day. I still perform what is, for me, a version of that "a card for every student in the class" mandate.

This year that took the form of a delicious Niman Ranch ribeye dinner along with specially selected gifts for my loved ones.

I went all out (for me), making herbed butter, harvesting lettuces from the garden for our salads.

I even baked a cake for dessert.

I'm gratified it all tasted good, but because I did what I did with love, for people I love unconditionally, this particular dinner and by extension our shared St. Valentine's Day celebration was a success long before the food hit our plates or our palates.

I am hopeful your history with Valentine's Day is not a checkered one. But whether or not you count yourself as the fortunate participant in a string of requited loving exchanges, I wish for you the freedom to express all the love you have without fear that its measure is somehow in the hands of others. I promise you, my Mother had it right all along.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-14T08:52:00.000-06:00

To all of you out there from everybody here - have a sweet day.....

Stupid is as...

2010-02-12T14:03:00.000-06:00

When I get extremely frustrated, I lose IQ points. Lots of them. More than I can afford to.

So this morning when I decided to try a recipe simply because it called for two and one-half cups grated cheese, hand grating the cheese being my strategy to stay warm(er) in a progressively cooling house while sitting through the fourth visit in as many weeks to try and fix our sputtering heat pump, I should have expected the outcome.

Mistakes would be made.

I read, in the list of ingredients, "2 cups quick-cooking grits". The first step in the directions (after preheating the oven) was to cook the grits according to the directions on the back of the package.

I had some cooked leftover rice already on hand, so, feeling very clever, I figured out in my head how much less of the two cups of grits to cook (ballparking the cooked rice available to substitute in for one half a cup of uncooked grits). Smiling to myself, I measured the 1 1/2 cups of grits out, and put the water on the heat.

I grated the cheese, warming up from the effort as was the initial incentive for the dish. I assembled the other ingredients. With a slightly warmer brain to my advantage I then noticed how, although the photo for the recipe was clearly of an 11x13 casserole, this recipe specifically directed me to butter a 9 inch baking dish.

I stepped back and took a better look at the volume of my now cooked grits after stirring in the rest of the ingredients called for, and gulped. This recipe was only meant to produce four servings.

Looking at the mass in the pan I realized, unless this was a special dish meant to provide four servings for premeet college track stars or marathoners desiring a carbohydrate blitz, I'd way miscalculated. Way.

I read the ingredients again. The recipe obviously (now) called for two COOKED cups of grits, not two uncooked cups of grits.

Sigh. Cheese grits are very forgiving I decided. I took a deep breath and slid the casserole into the oven. Whatever I had now, I sure hoped I liked it because in an hour I would have an awful lot of it.

Happy ending. I'd overcompensated with jalapeño peppers because I only had pickled slices on hand, so at least the pepper component of the dish was spot on.

If it lacked a certain almost overbearing salty cheesiness I was accustomed to from other recipes, this misread mixture made up for that with a delicacy of crust and interesting texture I attributed to the rice added in with the grits.

Now I am keeping my fingers crossed the rest of the folks around here respond well. Otherwise I am most definitely going to get my fill of grits in the days to come.

So here is the recipe (mostly) as written.

Jalapeño Cheese Grits
2 cups quick cooking grits
2 1/2 cups grated extra-sharp cheddar
1 stick unsalted butter
1 tablespoon hot sauce (I used Tabasco)
3 large eggs well beaten
2 jalapeños, finely diced (here is where I went nutso, dicing up a 1/3 cup at least!)
4 ounce can chopped green chiles

garlic salt (I used powder - I don't buy garlic salt)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cook grits according to the directions on the back of the package (and yes, this was where it all went terribly off track). Remove from the heat and add the next six ingredients.

Stir well and season with garlic salt to taste.

Pour into a buttered 9 inch baking dish and bake for one hour. Let cool slightly before slicing and serving.

Serves 4.

If any of you manage to make this correctly, I'll be interested to hear if you like it. I may yet try this out in the far future. It will take at least 5-6 days to run through the massive quantities of baked grits already on hand, but it would be fun to know what this recipe is meant to taste like!

Postscript: The heater repairman has been here for four and a half hours. If he doesn't pronounce us "repaired" pretty soon I suppose I'll ask him to sit down for a late lunch of grits, maybe put a cot out in the hall by the furnace. It might not be warm in this house but at least we won't starve!

I heart hand made

2010-02-07T10:24:00.011-06:00

I have always been a bit of a patsy for the hand made card or gift. At no time is that more applicable than St. Valentine's Day.

To me, a rhyming couplet on a glossy card never trumps hand written heart felt sentiment. When it comes to expressing love, words or gifts should clearly communicate "I know you well enough to know what you want, what you need, what you have been dreaming about". Or even better yet, a gift that indicates "I have been paying such good attention to you that I knew you wanted this even before you did".

When it comes to presenting a gift, a big part of the fun for me is finding some way to conceal the gift that yet reveals the relationship.

Case in point this repurposed map that will serve as the canvas for a hand stamped customized wrapping paper.I decided to revisit my crafting past and use a lowly potato to carve a stamp.

Nearly everyone has a potato and small knife around, and this is a fun way to channel my inner third grader. If you are lucky enough to have an eight year old around to play with, this is an even better project to share. Eight year olds can be careful with a knife, but aren't too cool to appreciate and enjoy simple fun like this.Materials needed for this are a medium sized potato, a small knife, a pencil to get the pattern started, and some paint to use as a stamping medium. I used acrylic paint here but poster paint works fine and I've heard you can use a stamp pad but haven't tried it that way.I like to keep my stamp shapes simple. I start with a larger version than I'll need because I typically end up having to size down as a result of over zealous carving.

If you do decide to try this, do as I say, not as I did. I used a tile table that was uneven. For the best results it takes a level surface to work on so the stamp will fully meet the paper. If you are not absolutely certain your paper won't bleed through, then place newsprint or something under your paper to protect your table surface. My tile table cleans up easily, so I'm fairly careless as you can see.

I like to start with a few practice stamps around the perimeter. That gives me a feel for how much paint or ink to use, how much pressure I want, and I can experiment with whether I like a well covered distinct area or a fainter stamp image that lets the map show through. I can always fill in with more if I want to later.

I let the paper dry completely before trimming and wrapping the gift.

Now comes the fun. I like to experiment with placement and set my imagination loose a little here.

Maybe I want to have a destination centered on top that is a place the recipient has already visited, or dreams to visit? Or maybe my choice will be driven by the colors or shape the top of the gift offers me. I was wrapping an oddly shaped gift that was not boxed but was rather surrounded by bubble wrap, so my gift did not have clear corners or sharp edges play with. If I am wrapping something in a box and the paper size and pattern allows it, I like to play with having the image on top be framed by the edges.

Et voila! I think this will warm the heart of my loved one before they even see what is inside.However (or whether) you celebrate, I do hope you will make it your priority to show those people who are special in your life that you love them over the next few days. Whether or not it is a hand made or store bought or no gift at all that would be your personal preference on St. Valentine's Day, we can all stand to be told in no uncertain terms that we are loved.Postscript: Love is a word some people throw around a lot. I am as guilty as the next one on that count, but I really do enjoy blogging and I especially enjoy the idea some of you visit regularly and let me know you've read and appreciated these posts by commenting. Thanks to each and every one of you and I hope you all have a wonderful warm weekend and feel appreciated by those who love you.

Weeping in the Kitchen

2010-02-04T10:15:00.008-06:00

Yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (except for when it wasn't).

The downhill slide started with a hotel reservation snafu that required 16 emails and two phone calls to resolve.

While I was fuming, I realized the house felt chillier than it should, and when I went to check the thermostat?

All I got was a teeny tiny blank screen of death. Which meant the heating system had gone offline. For the second time in the span of 30 days.When I get frustrated and angry I do snarl (oh yes I do!). I do take the Lord's name in vain and I do shake a fist and curse. But more centrally to our tale today, when I get frustrated enough, infuriated beyond measure, I veer into tearful territory.

And that, friends and fellow bloggers is precisely how I found myself yesterday by mid morning. Tearful. Everything simple had become complicated, everything easy had become difficult, and I was so frustrated with the indignity and injustice of it all (OK OK I know this was me getting overblown, I have not forgotten Haiti or world hunger, relax) that I had tears stinging in my eyes.

I thought to myself if anybody Mary Poppinsed their way into my presence and told me brightly "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade!" I would gladly have punched them for their trouble. (Then apologized. I was frustrated, not brutish.)

So I began to play with the phrase to distract myself from how long it might take the repair service guy to come look at our stupid STUPID nonfunctional heater.

"If life gives you tears, make.....".

..................... Sigh. Sniffle.

(insert light bulb here).

French Onion Soup! Mon Dieu! Naturelment! I'd been meaning to make onion soup for ages.I like it, the Hub loves it, and even though I had not yet stumbled across THE recipe, every iteration so far had been not only edible, but credible as a representation of the genre.So out came the previously printed recipes, the sharp knife and the large cutting board. A bag of onions fetched from their garage storage spot, a bouquet garni cobbled together from herbs snipped from our garden in between rainy spells, some organic beef stock I'd nabbed on sale at Wheatsville, and I was just about set.

Chop chop, sniffle sniffle. Yesssssss.

As it turns out, the heater required two service visits. Service guy number the first was apparently so overwhelmed by the onion fumes in our house that he may have missed something. Service guy the second was a sport, didn't charge additionally for his visit or efforts, and I ended up with onion soup plus a functional heater.Win/win.

Side note: In support of the conceit that I make a wide variety of dishes for dinner (as opposed to a sinking feeling some nights that "If This is Tuesday it Must Be Meat Loaf"), I'd been recording our dinner entrees on the calendar for the past few weeks just to keep track.

I mean, seriously, can you recall what you had for dinner night before yesterday? Four days ago? If so, great for you, be sure to leave the blueberries for the rest of us forgetful types, because without writing it down, the lineup of My Dinners Past predictably evaporates into the ether.

It's been a fun prospect as it turns out. Looking back on three weeks of dinner is at the very least enlightening as to our patterns. It has also provided a good counter argument to certain younger diners who consistently try to make a case for fast food with the contention it has been "ages" since we had fill-in-the-blank-fast-food. Unless by "ages" they mean days. Which, given the stretchy tendency of some days, I totally get.

I digress.

Looking back?We've had, in no particular order, Seafood Lasagna (an experiment that fell into the "meh-OK" category), potato onion soup, grilled lamb sirloin, ginger fried rice, brats, sliders, roasted chicken and bolognese on pasta. Plus take-out barbeque, fried chicken, pizza, and more pizza.

Once I had onion soup doing a Vulcan Flavor meld in the refrigerator, the heater back online, and the hotel reservation snafu unfued, in a rush of largesse I decided to treat everybody (read:long suffering me/myself/I) to a simple chocolate cake as a celebration of our Saved from the Trashbin Wednesday.The recipe that follows is from Sweet Paul's website and is just as he describes it - a wonderful brownie style cake, delicious served warm as a delivery vehicle for a scoop of ice cream. And as it turns out, just the thing to celebrate a Wednesday yanked out of the dumpster.

Simple Save Wednesday (aka)

Sweet Paul's Easy Chocolate Cake

1 stick melted butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 tablespoons baking cocoa

3/4 cup AP flour

Pre-heat your oven to 320F, 160C. (I set my oven for 325 degrees...)

Stir butter and sugar until the sugar is dissolved.

Add the eggs and mix well.

Stir in vanilla, cocoa and flour. (I added chopped pecans just because...CHOPPED PECANS!)

Pour the batter in a buttered cake tin and bake for about 30 minutes.

The cake is best if its a little underbaked in the middle, like a soft brownie.

Take out and let cool a little.

Serve while still a little hot a la mode or with some whipped cream.

Yum. Wednesday may never be the same.

So how about you? Can you remember what you had for dinner three nights ago? Four? Fess up in the comments section and while you're mulling, do consider trying this great simple cake to celebrate "just because". You DESERVE it, you know you do.

Radiculous

2010-01-17T10:50:00.004-06:00

If you've read much here you may already be aware. Me and my people are wordy. In every sense of the term.

Heck, even our cat uses a dictionary to bird watch through the window.

My wordiness was not entirely by choice. I was raised by a university professor/[unpublished] novelist and a registered nurse. My mother spent only slightly more time reading and working word puzzles than she did writing for various nonprofit venues.My father spent every spare moment in his study, reading and writing to prepare for classes or alternately, working on his version of the great American novel.

I was steeped in reading and writing from the get go. No shock then I grew up a reader. Fascinated by words, when I ran across anything unfamiliar, I would ask whichever parent was close by for help with a definition.

And it never failed.

Me: Mom, what does "ubiquitous" mean?
My Mom: Look it up for yourself. You know where the dictionary is.
Me: Mom, I will. But I'm in the middle of reading something and I don't want to stop. Could you just tell me what it means and I'll look it up later.
My Mom: No you won't.
Me: Mom, I will!
My Mom: OK. Read it to me in the sentence.
I would heave a dramatic sigh, roll my eyes surreptitiously and read her the sentence, only to hear:
My Mom: Good. Now look it up!

Back then "looking it up" meant a trip to the dictionary on my Dad's desk. It was a behemoth, a Webster's unabridged. It had been an anniversary surprise from my Mom to my Dad some years earlier. And that sums it up pretty well I guess, that a huge dictionary was one of my father's most treasured gifts from my mother.

Somehow when I was a parent rather than relieve my own children from the burdens of my obviously tortured beginnings I rather morphed into a version of my own parents. (HOW does that happen!?). Whenever my kids absent mindedly asked my husband or I the meaning of a word (or how to spell it), they would inevitably hear the same reply. "Go look it up for for yourself."

As I grew I developed a reliance on the precision of a dictionary definition to get me properly oriented when considering a topic to write about or simply mulling something over. Without a dictionary to guide me it was disconcerting to discover how often I'd layered a word with unwarranted content in the instances in which I would stubbornly define an unfamiliar term from its context rather than making that quick trip to the reference book.

And now there is the interweb. It has not replaced the dictionary certainly, but it has expanded my tendencies to seek reference materials for any foray into new territory. Which is what happened recently with, of all things, the radish.

Oh the radish. I have a long term happy relationship with this common garden plant. My mother loved radishes and we had them on hand nearly year round. As a child I grew to appreciate their crisp peppery taste, preferring them trimmed and salted.

As a young adult, my father in law grew not only the first, but the best icicle radishes I've ever eaten in his amazing garden. I tried to grow radishes in my own gardens over the years in Utah, California, and finally in Texas, with mixed results.From Webster's New Unabridged Dictionary, Deluxe Second Edition, Dorset and Baber 1979

rad´ish, n,[Fr. radis, from L. radix, a root.]

1. a plant of the genus Raphanus, particularly Raphanus sativus, a common garden plant with an edible red or white root.

2. the pungent root, eaten raw as a relish or in a salad

Store bought or garden fresh, there was only that one way I'd eaten every single radish in my lifetime. "Raw as a relish or in a salad".

Until last week that is. I'd been reading about roasted radishes and once they caught my interest, as these things go, it seemed recipes for roasted radishes were cropping up everywhere. When I spotted the stacks of organic radishes at Wheatsville Coop recently, I knew it was time to finally expand my radish repertoire.

So I turned to the internet and discovered this great recipe courtesy of Kalyn's Kitchen, for Roasted Radishes with Soy Sauce and Toasted Sesame Seed.

To follow is the the recipe almost as featured on Kalyn's wonderful site, but I urge you to make your own visit to the source. Kalyn's blog is ostensibly about eating well using the South Beach Diet, but you won't need to be on any particular diet to appreciate her recipes. Her photos of the process and finished product will not be improved upon by me certainly, and this great radish recipe is only one of dozens you'll want to try.

Kalyn's Roasted Radishes with Soy Sauce and Toasted Sesame Seed
(Makes 3-4 servings, recipe only slightly adapted from Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop.)

20 medium radishes, trimmed and cut into fourths (use all red, or a mixture of red and white) {I used all red}
1 1/2 T roasted peanut oil {I only had grapeseed oil but that has a high temperature tolerance, so worked fine in the oven}
1-2 T soy sauce (I used about 1 1/2 T) {so did I}
2 green onions (scallions) sliced thin
1 T sesame seeds, toasted in a dry pan {I got in a hurry - didn't toast my sesame seeds just sprinkled them on - still delish!}

Preheat oven to 425 F. Wash radishes, trim ends, peel if needed, and cut into same size pieces. I cut the white icicle radishes into diagonal pieces, and the red ones into half or fourths, depending on how big they were. Cut green onions into thin slices.

Toss radishes with peanut oil, then roast about 20 minutes, stirring one or two times. When radishes are tender and starting to brown, remove from oven, toss with soy sauce to coat and mix in green onion slices. Put back in oven and roast about 5 minutes more.

During final five minutes roasting time, put the sesame seed in a dry pan and toast over hot stove for about 2 minutes, or until starting to brown. Remove radishes from oven, place in serving bowl and sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds. Serve hot.

Now consider yourself poked, prodded, encouraged to get out there and try roasted radishes, whether or not you like them raw. Once roasted, eating radishes is a whole other enterprise. Slightly sweet with a great texture totally unlike their raw crispiness, roasted radishes are a wonderful, and for us, novel side dish.

Taking into account their low calorie count and glycemic status, radishes are perhaps just the right accoutrement to those eaters resolved to spend 2010 eating light. And fortunately, they are delicious. Satisfying. And now? Versatile as well.

So there you have it. With roasted radishes tasting this good, it is inevitable. Eventually the dictionary people will have to amend their definition to "often eaten raw, or roasted". You read it here first, folks.

OK now we got the culinary obligations duly disposed of how about a little wordy fun? What is the last word you recall having to look up in a dictionary? Online or in a book, either way. For me it was "pulchritude". It was what I thought it was, but honestly, until I looked it up I couldn't be sure.

Oh wait - you don't know for sure what "pulchritude" means? Well then, LOOK IT UP!

It's What's for Color

2010-01-11T08:55:00.010-06:00

So long to 2009's Mimosa (14-0848). Buh-bye 2008's Blue Iris (18-3943). Adios '07 Chili Pepper (19-1557). It is 2010 and you can relax because the suspense is over. Pantone has announced our latest color of the year and it is....TURQUOISE (15-5519)!

Be the first on your block to celebrate. Impress everyone with your fashion forward thinking and haul out everything you've got in shades of turquoise (remember to lift with your knees!).

This being a some of the time cooking blog I even found you a recipe for making your own (color) turquoise.

Essentially, turquoise is one part green to two parts blue. Play with the ratio a little if you want to, just don't tell Ruhlman. Only Pantone has to get that color right in a specific way every time.

According to my (superficial/arbitrary) research, turquoise gemstones range in colors depending on how much copper (blue) there is compared to the iron (green) in the soils in which they formed. Turquoise gemstones are attributed with all sorts of healing properties (especially on websites that offer the gemstones for sale. Charming coincidence!)

Stymied as to how/where you'd use Turquoise, the Color? No worries, Pantone has this from their press release announcing the color choice:

In fashion, Turquoise makes a statement that can look elegant and dressy in fine silk and gemstones, or casual and fun in cotton and athletic apparel. Because of its versatility, Turquoise is a great accent color in jewelry, purses, shoes, hair accessories and even nail polish for women, and ties, shirts and sportswear for men.

Because after all, (again from the press release so caps all theirs)

Turquoise Transports Us to an Exciting, Tropical Paradise While Offering a Sense of Protection and Healing in Stressful Times

Protection and Healing? Who doesn't want that!?!If asked, (go ahead, ask, I'm waiting) I would not have said I liked turquoise per se all that much as a color, but when I started looking around my house, I've got a bit showing here and there. Apparently I may be prescient, fashion color wise (which may come as a shock to those who know me well).Don't let that throw you. Take a look around, somewhere in your stuff is hiding that perfect example of turquoise something or other to casually display as a bit of color I-told-you- showmanship. Wait, showomanship? Showpersonship? Whatever, showoffyship.

Find that turquoise accent in your own belongings. Put it out artfully, all casual like. If you have lots of turquoise (really, why!?!?) try displaying in groups of three. If you have a house full of the stuff then I'm not sure what to say, except perhaps, "Enjoy 2010! This must be YOUR year!".

Then rest, basking in a growing sense of protection and healing, knowing you are safe from the Color Police for at least another year.

Triple Threat

2010-01-04T15:19:00.005-06:00

When most folks have already put themselves on some sort of purification regimen, or at least instituted a cream and butter taper, we are still rocking the rich foods.

Why?

Because is it the Hub's birthday on the third day of each new year.Cognizant of a lifetime of anti-climactic celebrations with a natal observation following so closely on Christmas and then New Year's Eve, I have made it my goal, nay my QUEST, to assure my husband gets a full on, pull out the stops birthday.

This year we knew we would have a scattered series of celebratory events throughout the season, and all for the same reason. Folks in our family work in health care and the food service industry, neither of which automatically takes a day off. Ever.

So between a several day to week run of broken up holidays, this season we ended up trying out not one but three new appetizers. Beating the odds, every one of them was a smash hit in its own way.

For those of you who are tantalized by the zesty and offbeat? I offer you the Rustic Rosemary Lemon Tart from the folks at Fine Cooking.A compilation of Meyer Lemon zest, goat cheese and fresh rosemary leaves (all but the cheese and pastry sheets coming from our own gardens), it is fresh and rich without being heavy. I was concerned the rosemary would be overwhelming but such worries were totally unfounded. Turns out fresh rosemary leaves baked on top of a bit of goat cheese are wonderful and rosemaryish without being at all boorish about it.

Next up for those who are more into mushrooms, I suggest creamed mushrooms from Smitten Kitchen.We made a half recipe so as not to end up with too many leftovers, and once we'd tried these, were disappointed in our supposed foresight. These are easy, quick, and yet offer a satisfying flavor that would suggest more time and attention went into them.

Finally, we had a slight redo of a walnut pesto recipe I'd spotted, also from Smitten Kitchen.

I know folks are firm walnut fans and they have their reasons, but being a Texan through and through I remain firmly convinced that just about anything a walnut can do, a pecan can do better.

With a large bag of toasted organic pecans already in the refrigerator, it was a no-brainer I'd take this cinchy pesto and do it up Lone Star style.A processor does most of the work and about the only effort you'll put into this one is restraining yourself from finishing it all up before you offer it to friends or family as originally planned.

Or hell, post-holiday restraint be damned, just make a batch, toast up a baguette, open a bottle of white wine and settle in for a truly palate pleasing evening all by yourself.

Aside from my stubbornly substituting pecans in for walnuts in the pesto, we prepared each recipe as is. I gave you links to the original posting sites so you can travel over and enjoy the ambience while picking up the instructions for these road tested goodies.

I promise you, the most difficult thing you'll clear for any of these three treats is to share them generously. They are that good. And that easy. Win/win.

Bye for now. I hope you are enjoying these first few days of the year and if you are not? Then run to the kitchen and make yourself something wonderful. And that's an order!

You Are Welcome! Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T11:20:00.005-06:00

Oh readers, I am certain you are well organized, menu planned ahead, shopping trip(s) taken care of already. I know you have baked, chopped, prepped in all sorts of ways to assure your gathering, or intimate dinner, or snuggle in to watch favorite movies, or whatever forms your New Year's Eve/Day celebrations will take, are all ready to roll food and beverage wise. You have done your homework, you know your customs, and you have everything on hand you need to make sure you have a lucky and prosperous and well fed start to your New Year.

However, there is one not so secret weapon in any prepared host or hostess arsenal that you may have missed and I am going to share it with you here and now. This is such a great concoction that even if it does not bring luck or prosperity all by itself, having it on hand may mean you really don't care so much about either.

What could be that good? The World's Best Mustard Sauce, that's what. The absolutely Makes Everything Taste Better Mustard Sauce.

I originally uncovered this Makes Everything Taste Better Mustard Sauce as part of a pork tenderloin recipe offered so long ago, well prior to internet wanderings, that I did not save the source when I typed it up to put into my notebook.

Sidebar: Yes I have a notebook, The Notebook really, and it is filled with typed out, page protector sheathed wondrousness. It never crashes or requires any sort of connection and I can often judge, by the stains or spots that appeared pre-sheating, how much we loved a particular preparation, just in case it has been that long I might have otherwise forgotten.

You see I type something out, print it, I fix it, we eat it, and if we like it I typically fix it again with tweaks that I note in pencil on the page. Once I have arrived at what we consider close enough to perfection, I type the recipe up again, tweaks included, and then slip it into a page protector which then is shoved into The Notebook (with category dividers I mostly completely ignore).

Occasionally, something is so good as is, it gets fixed several times before I bother to locate a sheet protector for it. Those lovelies finally get their plastic home but only after they have earned all sorts of splatter and splash marks indicating they were well appreciated.

Back to your soon to be beloved recipe:

MAKES EVERYTHING TASTE BETTER MUSTARD SAUCE

1/3 cup sour cream

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1 tablespoon dry mustard powder (I use Coleman's - who can resist that sunny yellow can?)

2 tablespoons chopped chives or very finely chopped green onion tops

Combine all ingredients well. Cover and chill at least two hours, preferably overnight.

And there you have it. Simplicity that, dare I say it, approaches perfection. The resulting sauce is an ideal side for a platter of sliced meats and cheeses. It goes well with any roasted or grilled meat, it rides happily atop any number of prepared vegetables, it is good on a sandwich and even better dolloped on a slice of quiche.

I have said, (over and over and over again, yes, yes, it is a favorite expression my family has heard WAY too many times) that this stuff is so good I'd be happy to eat my shoes, so long as they were well coated in this most delicious of mustard sauces.

And now I share it with you: the proud, the few, the readers of this blog.

You will very likely love-love-love this sauce and find all sorts of ways to work it into your meals from now on. Your lives, if not your waistlines, will be better for knowing of it.

So yes readers mine. Happy New Year! And, you are welcome!

Grateful for Gratin

2009-12-21T08:29:00.017-06:00

In what was to prove a significant rookie error decades ago, I agreed to schedule the Hub's and my wedding ceremony in late December, over what was then his Christmas break from med school. I was a bit giddy with it all actually, so perhaps I could be forgiven for not understanding at the time that having our anniversary fall between our two mother's birthdays, not to mention just prior to Christmas followed shortly by the Hub's early January birthday would create an ongoing celebrational identity crisis.

Adding to the fun, perhaps I have not mentioned here how tricky Hub is to shop for gift wise? Planting a third gift opportunity proximal to both Christmas and his birthday was just plain dumb on my part. The ongoing gift idea distribution angst I experienced in the years that followed? I have nobody to thank there but myself.

And eventually the coup de grace was revealed. We got married during a commonly observed school break. This means, lo these years (and years!) later, when it came time to celebrate our anniversary as empty nesters, our nest was temporarily full again. Come late December, all absent students return home for the holidays. D'oh!

That last bit I mention just for effect. It really is not a downside. I love having my kids around, wedding anniversary or not. And yes, LawSchoolGirl is currently back in town. Which I am tickled three shades of pink over. So it turns out the Hub and I were observing our 35th (yes, yes, I got married when I was negative 12 years old) wedding anniversary this past weekend and as these things happen, the Hub was on call for a busy emergency room.

With no way to guarantee an uninterrupted meal time, we'd planned to celebrate our big day with a a nice quiet steak dinner at home. Including all available family members. In this case, since ChefSon was working, that meant LSG would be joining in on the fun.

LSG stated she felt a bit like she was horning in (although I promise you boys and girls, once you get to anniversary number 35, if you've been trying even a teensy bit you've already covered the Wow! bases pretty thoroughly). To alleviate that she proposed she would take over the major cooking duties. And in typical LSG style, as her gift to us, she upgraded the extremely simple menu I'd originally planned.

The first to fall was grilled steak. LSG had pan cooked steak at ChefSon's since she'd been home this year and was determined to share the technique. I had previously voiced my all too typical resistance to trying something new when something familiar was already appreciated. However, since LSG would now be doing the cooking she had the chance to gracefully overcome my objections.

It was decided: to top our dinner menu, pan cooked steak with a beurre rouge jus (and yeah I may be taking liberties with the French but come on....it is our anniversary dinner!).

Next to go were the horseradish mashed potatoes. LSG likes horseradish and she likes mashed potatoes, but she was feeling ambitious. A bit of an internet search produced a recipe for a horseradish gratin that got rave reviews on Epicurious. A quick check to see we had requisite ingredients on hand and et voila! Horseradish Gratin it would be.

I went out to harvest thyme for the steak and potato dishes, and while I was out there in the garden beds anyway, secured arugula and baby lettuce to add to organic romaine from the store for our dinner salad.

I'd already purchased a tiramisu cake (Hub's favorite hands down) and a nice Prosecco for toasting. I decided I'd make a Prosecco vinaigrette for the salad and before you could say Bob's Your Uncle! our Very Special Anniversary Dinner Menu courtesy of Preternaturally Talented Guest Chef LSG, was complete.

The gratin turned out to be pretty simple to put together.

We halved the recipe, figured out our substitutions, gathered our ingredients, and away we went. We assembled our mise en place.I showed LSG how I tie bouquet garniWe carefully sliced the potatoesLSG cooked them in cream until just tenderOnce the garni was removed (we put our garlic in the garni proper since in the comments section for the recipe site people stated they'd run into trouble removing the garlic which was the same color as the cream in the pot) and the potato cream mixture was placed into a buttered shallow baking dish, LSG sprinkled on the grated cheeseShe baked it for 30 minutes and then checked for color. It was gorgeous!Addendum: Here is the recipe as we prepared it, just to be friendly...

Potato Gratin with Horeseradish and Parmesan [printable version]

adapted from Shaw McClain's Yukon Gold Potato Gratin Recipe for Epicurious 10/06

1/2 bunch fresh thyme

1/2 tbsp fresh black peppercorns

1 bay leaf

2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed with back of knife

1 1/2 pounds potatoes peeled and cut crosswise into 1/8 inch slices

1/2 tablespoon sea salt

2 cups heavy cream

1/8 cup prepared horseradish

1 cup Parmesan cheese, coarsely grated

Place a rack in middle position and preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Generously butter a 1 1/2 gratin dish (we used a deep dish pie plate).

Make a bouquet garni with first four ingredients.

In heavy 3 saucepan combine potatoes, bouquet garni, salt and cream. Set over moderate heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered until potatoes can just be pierced with a fork (begin to check at 10 minutes).

Take off heat. Remove bouquet garni and discard. Stir in horseradish.

Spread potato mixture in buttered dish and sprinkle with cheese. Bake until top is golden brown and potatoes are tender, 30-40 minutes. Let stand 15 minutes before serving.

I chose not to share photos of the finished plates in toto, but I rush to assure you the gratin recipe was amazing and lived up to several reviews where folks stated though they were full from their meal, it was hard to resist standing around polishing off the remainders. This dish tastes that good. The pan cooked steaks were done just to medium rare, and the herbed buttery red wine pan reduction sauce elevated every morsel to perfection on the plate.

Last to appear was the tiramisu cake decorated with fresh cut flowers, one for every decade (old! I am so old!) we've been married.

A hint from an old married lady who has decorated many a cake with flowers through the years:If you want a cake decorated with fresh flowers to be a uniformly pleasing experience, be sure to use pieces of masking tape or thoroughly coat the cut end of the flowers with melted wax. If you use wax, let it sit until it cools and you can see you've achieved a good seal. This assures the stem does not stealthily share anything indigestible with your cake surface that will eventually find its way into the mouths of your dinner guests.See? Pretty enough to eat and safe to boot so your guests will live to properly thank you for your thoughtfulness.

All in all a meal to remember, with not one but two new recipes to relish repeating. Let it never be said that having talented grown children around to help their parents celebrate anniversaries is anything but a gift all its own. I am so grateful for my son and my daughter, both of whom are the shiniest reflections of 35 years of marriage I could ever imagine.

Folks, this will likely be the last blast from these quarters until after the holiday hooraw has settled. I do have plans for all sorts of familiar treats to have on hand for our Christmas day gift sharing feasting.... Crock pot chili with corn bread the night before, a routine developed years ago to accommodate last minute shoppers and other schedule crunches. Day of, Cava Mimosas, Egg Nog, sausage kolaches, banana bread, sausage cheese balls, spiced glazed nuts, Monte Cristo bake, and tortilla soup. That should be gracious plenty to keep body and soul together while our sensibilities are busy being delighted by Santa's efforts on our behalf this year.

It will be lovely. Fun and funny and amazing because it is all of us, together, doing what we do best. Eating and drinking while enjoying each other's company. I hope for nothing less for all of you, a wonderful celebration in whatever way you do it best. Happy Holidays to each and every one. See you next year!

Now, it is Christmas

2009-12-14T08:52:00.011-06:00

The lights for the outside of our house went up the Sunday after Thanksgiving, a schedule we observe year in and year out, weather permitting.The paperwhite bulbs, started weeks ago in jars and little pots, have begun unfurling their delicate blooms.

The tree is up, the stockings are hung.Television schedules have been disrupted for "specials" and a few series have already aired the holiday version of their shows.

But truth be told, the something that really makes it Christmas for this family in this house, didn't happen until last night.

It is not shopping or decking the halls, it is not carols or special lights, not church services, wreaths, candles or any decorations at all that send the Now It Is Christmas signal to my brain.

Whether or not it would be considered sad beyond measure or merely expected, it is food that does that work, and for me, one holiday dish in particular.

How do I know it is Christmas? With the arrival of...Chex Mix!

I have, as long as I can remember, always preferred the salty crunchy treats over the sweet or chewy ones. Put out a bowl of mixed nuts or a plate of cheese and crackers alongside a plate of fudge and I'll be happy to let you have all the candy if you'll spot me all the rest.

I remember discovering what was to become my very favorite savory holiday treat at a neighbor's house, when I was about five or six years old. This was the home of my best friend, her Mom being my Mom's best neighborhood friend, their house being the scene of many a sleepover and shared meal where I had most of my first "otherness" food experiences.

This gathering was to be of the "bring a holiday treat to share" variety of open house and I had eagerly helped my Mom make several loaves of banana bread to take as our contribution. My Mom was not one to keep baked treats around our house, she usually didn't bake anything she wasn't going to give away, so the idea I'd actually get to eat some of what we'd baked was honestly the center of my excitement about going to the party.It was the potential of multiple slices of banana bread that had me obediently slipping into a dress my Mom felt required the support of a particularly scratchy stiff petticoat, an undergarment whose itchiness was the bane of my dressed up existence in those days.

It was that promise of banana bread in combination with a sociably distracted Mom, pleasantly diverted from her usual focus on staying between me and my goal of putting myself into a sugar coma, that had me on my very best behavior. I was helpful, polite, thoughtful, doing anything and everything I could to assure I would be allowed to accompany her to this neighborhood holiday extravaganza.

We'd finished baking the bread before lunch and after the loaves had cooled, filling the house with their enticing aroma, and I had finished a lunch I had no interest in, Mom carefully sliced the bread in preparation for fanning it out artistically on a platter, and let me have one end piece to eat.

Finishing the arranging, she wiped her hands on her apron and placed a warning hand on my shoulder. Looking me in the eye she gave me the lowdown on how the rules regarding my behavior at this party would go.

We would go to the party, she would put the platter of bread on the table set with food for the guests, and after that I was not to touch the bread until our hostess had taken the plastic wrap off. I was not to hover around the table and I was not to ask when we could have the bread.

Then, she said, I could take only one slice at a time. After I took that slice, a small one, I was to move away from the table and visit with somebody at the gathering while I ate it, and could only then walk! not rush! back to the table to take one more slice. The bread was to share with our friends and neighbors, she emphasized. There would be lots of treats on the table, and we were not taking the banana bread over to eat it all ourselves.

It was finally time. I watched my Mom place the plate with all those wondrous slices of banana bread goodness on the well stocked table. I grinned as my best friend's Mom took the plastic wrap off imediately, and told us to help ourselves to anything.

Then I realized there were too many grown-ups between me and my goal. Foiled, temporarily, I spooned a small handful of some sort of mixed cereals onto my plate and began to nibble. Clouds parted, angel choirs sang. More intrigued by the savory crunchy mixture with every bite, I asked my best friend if she knew what this most delicious treat was called?"Texas Trash" she told me, a favorite of her Mom's and the treat they had made the day before in large batches to anchor the table now covered with cookies and candies and breads of all kinds.

I went back for helping after helping, the banana bread quickly and completely forgotten as I ate pile after pile of salty crunchy wondrousness.

I eventually discovered the so-called Texas Trash was not a regional secret treasure but was really a variation of the nationally introduced Chex Mix. No matter the scale however, it was then and there, standing anchored close by a large bowl of toasted cereal pieces, that a food obsession bordering on addiction was born.

My friend's Mom made her mix with Spanish peanuts and Cheerios, a variation from the original recipe offering pleasing round shapes to contrast with all those squares. I somehow imprinted on that variant and the round brown Os became a look that came to represent how "my" Chex Mix must be. Over the years there have been multitudes of recipe tweaks offered by the cereal company themselves, not to mention the alterations that other families made to appease the taste buds of their nearest and dearest.

Chex Mix became available in bags, ready made, a cheesy version was introduced, but it matters not. We have tinkered with the recipe over the years, but finally landed upon OUR version (more Worcestershire sauce! no pretzels!) that serves as home base for all our Holiday Sanctioned Chex Mix focused holiday gnoshing.

And that simple fact remains: once the Chex Mix appears on the kitchen counter, the holiday eating game is officially ON. More so than cookies or candies or cheese balls or egg nog, it is the making, and eating, of mass quantities of Chex Mix that marks Christmas for me.

Here is the Base Recipe AustinAgrodolce way to make the merriest of mixes:
3 cups Corn Chex® cereal
3 cups Rice Chex® cereal
3 cups Wheat Chex® cereal
1 cup peanuts (light salt if I can find them)
1 cup Cheezits®
1 cup Cheerios®
6 tablespoons butter or margarine
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder

I do it up old school, using an aluminum roasting pan I buy just for this purpose and just for each year, baking the mix in a conventional oven for an hour at 250 degrees, stirring every 15 minutes, because I remain convinced the time in the oven coats and toasts the pieces better than the more contemporary microwave version.Now it is your turn to share in the comments section - what is your "official" holiday food? What substance, by its very appearance, lights up the holiday palates around your neck of the woods? And if it is Chex Mix, do you have your own variation on the recipe that makes it special for you and yours?Cheezits® instead of Goldfish® crackers? All pecans instead of mixed nuts or peanuts alone? Rye chips? A special herb mix? Share it here and know you are potentially helping create a new holiday tradition for somebody, one crunchy munchy bite at a time.

Oooof, followed by The Pig, Again

2009-11-25T08:23:00.017-06:00

I am finding myself gone all topsy-turvy in reacting to the looming presence of Thanksgiving tomorrow.

While I am deeply grateful for the chance to sit and eat a home cooked meal with all of my immediate family this year, I find I am also chafing at the wretched excess I found over the past weeks as I wandered the the food blog interweb.

The hype around this one meal has outdone the H1N1 virus in terms of reaching fever pitch. I am reacting to it as I would any holiday incarnation of a toddler caught mid-tantrum. I long for nothing more than the chance to gently lead my holiday back out of the public eye, calm it way the hell down, and reduce the histrionics until it is manageable and enjoyable again, for both our sakes.

That out of control sense is (cough!) probably coming from inside out, so rearranging my own attitude will be just what the doctor ordered.

With that in mind, I am heading into the kitchen with renewed determination to be more wabi-sabi as I put together the reasonably simple sides and desserts my family designated as "required".

The main course, the dressing and an appetizer will be the focus of attention for tomorrow's cooks, whoever ends up holding the spoon. My goal is to seek the opposite of perfection this go-round. I want to celebrate any and all imperfections and let them be Just Right.

So for the moment, while I head off to wrestle with my perfectionism demons, let me leave you with something of an Anti-Turkey post and rather share with you another recent foray into the realm of Porky Wonderfulness.

Without further ado? Ladies and Gentlemen, the Pig, Again....

Cochinita Pibil is a family favorite I was determined to reproduce at home.

The result of a citric braise with an achiote centric marinade, cochinita pibil is typically served with pickled onions and rice, often eaten simply folded into a heated tortilla. This simplified technique, using a shoulder roast of whatever size you wish, can yield enough for a small family (with great leftovers) or a small crowd. Your call.

Chef Son had assured me he could guide me through the easy technique, and once I located a source for Achiote that came with a recipe for the marinade right on the packet, he reviewed it and pronounced it as very close to the one he'd used in a restaurant setting. I gathered my ingredients and laid out a three day game plan.

Madrecita Achiote Marinade

4 tablespoons achiote (one small package)
2 cups orange juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground pepper
pinch ground cumin
pinch ground coriander
pinch oregano
(I added a pinch of cinnamon)
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
Salt to taste

Marinate seafood, pork or chicken from 3 hours to overnight. (printable version here).

"Pibil" reportedly refers to a stone lined pit and "cochinita" is an entire baby pig, so calling this dish cochinita pibil is taking liberties, clearly. I suppose to be more accurate, we'd have to dub it Puerco a la Pibil or something like that, but a need for accuracy was off the table as long as we ended up with a delicious dinner in its place.

The Strategy:

Day one was to make the marinade according to the Madrecita packaging and let it sit overnight for the flavors to speed date, fall in love, and hastily marry.

Day two I cut a Niman 2-3 pound half pork bone in shoulder roast into four smaller chunks and placed it into the marinade for an overnight steeping.

The third day, I made a half recipe of the pickled onions, refrigerated them, then put the meat and the marinade into a dutch oven for a long slow cook at 325 degrees.

As advised by ChefSon, I put a bit of water into the pan to make sure the liquid level came 3/4 quarters of the way up the meat.After several hours in a low oven the meat was fork tender as required - all ready to go. I siphoned off as much of the fat as I could out of the pan, shredded the pork and spooned the defatted pan liquid on top. It can hold in a warm oven at that point until needed.
Pickled Onions, or Cebollas Curtidas 

(Rick Bayless)  Makes 7 cups
4 large (about 1 1/2 pounds) red onions, peeled and cut in half 2 cups fresh lime juice Salt

Thinly slice the onions (this can be done using a food processor fitted with a thin slicing blade). Scoop the onions into a heat-proof, non-reactive bowl. Pour boiling water over them, wait 10 seconds, then pour the onions into a large strainer. Return the drained onions to the bowl, pour on the lime juice and stir in the 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Cover and place in the refrigerator until serving time. Before serving, taste and season with additional salt if you think necessary. (printable version here).

I didn't make a habañero salsa as is often featured as companion piece for this first go round as nobody at the table was much of a pepper head. I do have habañero peppers finally set on our plant out back, so when they ripen I will make another batch of the puerco pibil and add salsa as a table condiment. Alternately you could set out a bit of Sriracha or jar salsa for anybody that wanted to lively up their tacos.

The results were delicious and not at all tricky, though it did require juicing a small mountain of limes and oranges as part of the prep. If you have any recipes calling for piles of citrus peel, dig them out for sure. You will have peels in abundance after making the marinade for the meat and onions.

Also, Annato is quite a tenacious dye, especially when combined with rendered pork fat, so you will want to take a bit of care not to paint yourself or your counter with any of the pan juices. That tendency put this dish into the sartorial "No Whites!" category for me already populated by barbeque, Rotel dip, and anything with potentially drippy staining propensities. You may have better luck than I have historically experienced eating messy sauces without staining light colored clothing. I know my limits and while this dish doesn't need bibs, it does require attention. You've been warned....

The final moist and smoky slightly sweet pork was its own reward for the requisite sticky time with the juicer. I'm not sure Johnny Depp's Agent Sands character from Once Upon A Time in Mexico would have shot me over the results, but you never can tell. I sat facing the front door, just in case.

Once you hit the point of Turkey/Pumpkin Palate Fatigue, get yourself a pork shoulder roast and try some Cochinita Pibil as delightful antidote, won't you? ¡Adios, amigos! And, Happy (relaxed) Thanksgiving!

When life gives you lemons...

2009-11-19T10:46:00.005-06:00

A year or so ago after watching in amazement how productive the potted tree was at the house where I picked up my CSA baskets, I stalked a local nursery relentlessly until I managed to pick up two Meyer Lemon trees all my own.

I potted them both up and gave one to ChefSon to anchor the culinary patio garden he was cultivating at that time, keeping the other for our own back yard sustainability experiment in liberally mixing edibles with lookables.

Fast forward several months and ChefSon moved into a slightly smaller non-ground floored condo space vacated by his sister as she headed off to graduate school. I re-inherited Meyer Lemon the Second, and have the two trees flanking a mosaic bed out back.

Now nearly a year later and we have the first "all our own" crop of lemons to crow about.

After meditating over the possibilities of "what to do with all those lemons" I finally decided to forgo limoncello as we are just not that into liqueurs.

I skipped over marmalade because we haven't eaten all the loquat strawberry jam from last Spring's efforts and aside from aggressively gifting people with more jars of jam (not that anybody has complained, mind you) I don't want to end up with cabinets filled with jams and preserves.

Lemonade would be a decadent misuse of the Meyers I believe and while I have plans to use some of them, juiced, for a couple of Thanksgiving recipes, I decided the rest ought to be preserved in a salt mixture, where they will hold for several months.

Here from David Lebovitz' amazing website is the basic process, although I am calling in ChefSon later today to add any tweaks of his own, and he will rightfully share the bounty, seeing as one of the trees was originally given to him.

Moroccan Preserved Lemons

Scrub the lemons with a vegetable brush and dry them off.

Cut off the little rounded bit at the stem end if there's a hard little piece of the stem attached. From the other end of the lemon, make a large cut by slicing lengthwise downward, stopping about 1-inch (3 cm) from the bottom, then making another downward slice, so you've incised the lemon with an X shape.

Pack coarse salt into the lemon where you made the incisions. Don't be skimpy with the salt: use about 1 tablespoon per lemon.

Put the salt-filled lemons in a clean, large glass jar with a tight-fitting lid. Add a few coriander seeds, a bay leaf, a dried chili, and a cinnamon stick if you want. (Or a combination of any of them.)

Press the lemons very firmly in the jar to get the juices flowing. Cover and let stand overnight.

The next day do the same, pressing the lemons down, encouraging them to release more juice as they start to soften. Repeat for a 2-3 days until the lemons are completely covered with liquid. If your lemons aren't too juicy, add more freshly-squeezed lemon juice until their submerged, as I generally have to do.

After one month, when the preserved lemons are soft, they're ready to use. Store the lemons in the refrigerator, where they'll keep for at least 6 months. Rinse before using to remove excess salt.

To use: Remove lemons from the liquid and rinse. Split in half and scrape out the pulp. Slice the lemon peels into thin strips or cut into small dices. You may wish to press the pulp through a sieve to obtain the flavorful juice, which can be used for flavoring as well, then discard the innards.

Figuring out how to best employ this seasonal excess reminded me of various reactions I experienced as I helped LawSchoolGirl make a drive from Michigan to Texas recently.

I purposefully did not take my camera, partly due to space restrictions in the packed car that was to serve as my return transport to Austin, and partly as intentional discipline.

I wanted to soak up the sights on this trip using my eyes and not my camera. I wanted to experience what could come from simply seeing, rather than my typical framing, cropping, and review of the shots captured instead of relying upon my own powers of remembrance and observation.

Sightseeing out a car window, rather than flying so far above the fray, is its own reward. As we moved at car's pace from the North, where frosts and freezes were routine repeaters in the local weather forecasts, all the Fall color was on the ground, already carefully raked off of sidewalks and driveways. As we made our way South to where leaves were still clinging, it was fascinating to me to use my roadside vantage point to observe patterns of harvest I miss from my suburban setting.

In Michigan I noted one particularly large orchard along the highway we took while heading towards Indiana. Acres and acres of empty trees merely hinting at the bounty they had so recently released. Were these apple trees? Pears? Whatever they were, they were meticulously groomed and obviously well cared for.

Apples are a fruit I've begun to really enjoy again after years of avoidance. Alar scares have been overcome by the wider availability of organics plus several newly introduced varieties that pack all sorts of flavor, texture and nuance back into what had become all about packaging with no real content. Honeycrisps are a current family favorite. I've seen them described as "cider still in the skin". I think I like their crunch almost as much as the taste.

We moved past miles and miles of emptied corn fields in Illinois, some of them with stalks recently plowed under while others were just beginning that process. As we moved further South we caught up with the harvest, finally driving alongside fields where ears were being stripped of their kernels which were then being blown into trailered hoppers.

After crossing the line into Arkansas, the dominant roadside view abruptly changed from corn to cotton. Most of the white puffs were off the plants already and packed into huge 18 wheeler sized loaves lined along field edges, covered with colorful tarps and tagged with coding. Here and there in the small spaces between fields were drifts of cotton bolls looking like so many tiny snow drifts in the November sun shine.

Also predominant in Arkansas, especially in the early morning portion of our drive, were large red tailed hawks, seated on fence posts, all facing the rising sun. I eventually lost count of how many I saw that morning, but it was clear they had at least a temporary affinity for the newly harvested cotton fields. I suppose all sorts of small prey were exposed by the stripping of the fields, and perhaps the hawks were following the harvest opportunistically? I noticed once the roadside cotton and a few grain fields I couldn't readily identify were replaced by stands of old growth pine and understory sumac, there were no longer hawk sentinels along the highway.

The last two observations I'll share were somewhat related. All along the way we passed and were passed by vehicles loaded down with what appeared to be an entire family and all their belongings. I ventured a guess many of them are migrant harvesters, moving South, following the crops being taken from the fields. Some of them may have been heading home to share holidays with family and friends, but I feel certain most of them were hoping to find more work in the still sun warmed fields and orchards of the Rio Grande valley.

Watching these families with their belongings precariously piled atop various vehicles and trailers I was starkly reminded of how much I blindly accept in the process of bringing food from the field to my table. Driving past mile after mile of field planted fencerow to fencerow in relentless monoculture format was a stark reminder of how deeply invested our economy is in large scale agribusiness.

Even if governmental policies were to more actively support/demand determined divestment from monoculture agribusiness, it will take years of careful crop substitution and repurposing of the vast majority of our fields and farms to move from one style of food production to another. Do we have the national will for such a task?

Do we really have any other good choices?

One final note. After getting back home and making some pumpkin sausage soup in anticipation of a rainy cold front supposedly on the way I had just over a cup of pumpkin purée left over.

Relying on a faint memory I turned to the search engine of the ever reliable Simply Recipes to unearth this gem of a recipe: Pumpkin Ginger Nut Muffins. (And sure, I am partly telling you this because I am so impressed with myself for recalling a recipe I read and thought looked good over a month ago... In TexasDeb memory terms a month is like seven years!)As promised they were a snap to put together, did not require a stand mixer or any special equipment, and filled the house with the most wonderfully evocative autumnal aroma while baking. After the olfactory buildup I was hopeful the taste would stand up to the sensory promise already made and oh.... Me oh my. It so did just that.

These muffins are not overly sweet and would be perfect to have on hand as breakfast or late night snacks for any and all kitchen help you might manage to corral in the next week or so. And if you don't find yourself with a cup of left over pumpkin purée, these are well worth opening a can. Make a double batch and just try not to eat half of them before your guests arrive.

unsubscribe me!

2009-11-10T09:49:00.006-06:00

One thing has led to another and I have two discoveries to share.

The first discovery involves a form of bandwidthism, a schism of sorts that has evolved in the blogging world between those with dial-up woes, and the rest of the interweb world.

As is all too typical of the "haves", I was going merrily along my way, posting photos, BIG photos, at times between nearly every paragraph of a post, convinced that the visuals were every bit as important as the text.

And they were, they most certainly are. I was correct about that, but not at all in the way I originally envisioned.

After reading a post on a recently discovered website, I was quite chastened by the author delineating that, if she had not visited certain web sites recently, it was chiefly due to her frustration with the agonizingly slow process of waiting for large photos to load, especially when accompanied by little in the way of explanatory or engaging text to keep her occupied while the images arrived.

There are all sorts of NSFW (not suitable for work) warnings to be seen on posts, but I don't recall regularly seeing anything warning dial-up users of an image-weighted post.

I had not only been ignoring the problem I had been oblivious to it. It struck me. How very broadband of me to assume that everybody would be content to wait, textless, while my three photos of a front porch berry arrangement crawled across the wires.

I am not certain what a proper response to this new awareness might look like, but I do know I will try to be more aware of how and when I use images in future posts. There will be times and there are certainly formats that are all about the imagery, but here especially, I like to think it is the text that is the work horse.

On to my second epiphany for this week.

At some point in the remote past, I had been opening my email program only to experience a dearth of arrivals. I was not bright enough to be properly grateful for that I suppose, and along the way I signed up for all sorts of "newsletters" and "alerts" and automated daily post type services. This meant that, whether or not I had anything in the way of real communiques from friends or relatives, I had what at the time was a comfortably stuffed looking in box.

Gradually however, I found myself scanning the "from" column to find the "real" mail scattered sparsely in between the automated stuff. The posts from people I really did wish to read, the actual emails from friends directly and only written to me, along with the few daily updates I still enjoyed perusing, rather than those I was feeling obligated to at least skim.

I now find myself in a situation where I will be away from all that is "online" for a span of days. Not wishing to return to hundreds of unread missives, I determined the need to unsubscribe my email account from everything of a daily delivery nature.

While I knew it would be relatively easy to do so, what I did not anticipate was the rush of lightness and a very distinct feeling of liberation that arrived along with a batch of "you have been unsubscribed" confirmatory emails. The relinquishing of these various daily shared obligations has triggered a sense of deep relief, not loss.

How did I get to a point where I was allowing myself to feel obligated to read almost everything that arrived electronically? I certainly do not feel I must open, much less read the various snail mail assortment I find in each day's postal delivery. I pursue what attracts my interest and ignore (recycle) the rest.

I'm not altogether clear how this intentional self immersion took on such unintentional emotional weight, but I am delighted to have raised my head back above those waters for now. Once I am back at the keyboard regularly again if I find it too time consuming to hunt down certain resources on a daily basis, I will resubscribe.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to an abrupt weaning away from a pattern of hours spent in front of this glowing screen. A change of pace, even when not altogether intentional, is always instructive if not thoroughly enjoyable. Whatever I miss much, I will enjoy that much more upon my eventual return. Whatever I forget about will be fine without me and vice versa.

It is a gorgeous day. I intend to get out into it, for once leaving my camera and my constantly post composing mindset behind.

While I am away, fare thee well, my friends. I will be back before too long and I hope you will return as well. In the meantime, feel free to weigh in with your own reactions to what you find in your email inbox in the comments section below. Here are a few queries to get the comment juices flowing....

Aside from the patently junky, are you getting only what you really want in your email inbox?

Do you feel obligated to stay subscribed, and past that, to regularly read everything you try out for a time?

Have you developed a sense of loyalty to certain sites? If so, does that serve only as boon to the time you spend at your computer or does obligation lurk just beneath the surface?

Let's hear it - what is your reaction when you open your email inbox?

Cashew!

2009-11-05T09:35:00.006-06:00

Gesundheit! I want to celebrate two teensy recent successes with you.

Success Numero Uno:I did not cave in and buy any chocolate candies for Halloween this year. Not even after the day itself when everything was marked down to half price. Sorry for handing out what many would consider the cheap stuff, neighborhood children!

That meant when (no "if" in this equation) the Hub and I did hit the Halloween leftovers (AND the bag we essentially scarfed down all ourselves in the two week run-up to Halloween) it was artificial flavored and colored sugary stuff sure enough, but it was Fat Free artificial flavored and colored sugary stuff. (cue crowd "oooooooooooh" noise followed by wild burst of applause).

Thank you, thank you, no really, thanks a lot, you can stop applauding now, really, (holds hand up), seriously, thanks very much....

Sucess Numero Dos:I finally got my act together and actually prepared the recipe for Marc's Cashew Chicken I'd salivated over on Simply Recipes recently after having the printout prominently displayed on my counter for four full days. It got to where I couldn't look at the piece of paper. It just sat there, mocking me, representing as it did one more thing I wanted to do but hadn't. Until I did yesterday, that is.

That success was twofold: I did what I set out to do AND the chicken was every bit as delicious on the plate as it read to be on Elise's blog.

The Hub had only one complaint about this: he felt the serving I gave him for dinner last night was too small. This was followed up by a mild fritz of sorts upon his discovering that yes, although we did have leftovers, I had in fact already stashed said leftovers in the refrigerator.

A recent practice I have employed, after two reasonable servings are on our plates for dinner, of putting whatever is left into a container that goes directly into the refrigerator, has proven to be a fairly successful gambit for preventing an all too common after dinner debacle which runs a bit like this.

One or the other of us will arise from where we have eaten, stack and then stroll virtuously (we are cleaning up yes? yay us!) into the kitchen with our dirty plates, ostensibly to place them in the dishwasher.

At this point however, the Hub might cave and dish up a second, hopefully slightly smaller version of dinner from the still warm leftovers in the pots and pans. Which is at least an open admission "I am going to eat more".

More perniciously, if I am the one taking the dishes into the kitchen, I sometimes end up standing flatfooted at the kitchen counter, "cleaning up" by scraping out and eating the remnants of some portion of our dinner directly from the pot or pan, often using the serving spoon itself.

Worst case scenario for me? The above happening while the water is running full blast for no good reason into the sink as I am power spooning that extra serving of mashed potatoes into my mouth.

Waste not want not!

Or put another way, Ask not for whom the elastic waist pants toll, they toll for thee!

So yes, putting any leftovers immediately into the refrigerator at least means if either of us is going to ignore that we have just eaten what is considered a normal portion of whatever is for dinner and get ourselves more food, we at least have to go to enough extra trouble to do so that it will hopefully make us stop and think long enough to realize: this is eating that is not about being hungry.

Back to Marc's Cashew Chicken.

Photo from Simply Recipes website

I have only one quibble with this recipe and that is with regards to the suggested addition of minced fresh ginger to the marinade.

The flavor was fantastic but the high heat for all the stir frying meant the ginger bits in the marinade over browned. Next time, I will either put the ginger into the marinade and then strain it out and discard it before cooking, or I will put the minced ginger in towards the end with the chopped onions instead.

I think my final answer will probably be B: add the ginger in with the onions. Once those bitty bits are in the marinade enough of them will stick to the chicken pieces that even after straining there will be over browned remnants in the end product. Which said over browned remnants, I hasten to add, did not keep us from snarfing down every delicious bite last night. No, no, not at all.

This cashew chicken had deep layers of flavor, was easy to make, fast to cook up, and especially simple after I did most of the prep hours ahead. Getting all the chopping and cashew boiling done at the same time I placed the chicken pieces into the marinade meant dinner was ready rapidamente.

Check the full recipe out here and see what you think.

How did you do at Halloween? Lots of trick or treaters in your place or no? Apparently some neighborhoods were swamped with kids from all over the area while others, like ours, had just enough of a crowd show up to mostly drain the candy cauldron.

I am the ghost of Halloween past.....

Granted, I was doling out the treats by the hands full to each child, but I figure that was the best way to make up for the whole "no chocolate here!" scenario.

Next up Holiday wise is Thanksgiving, and while I am not especially grateful for the recipe frenzy this season typically triggers "48 new ways to prepare cranberries!" I am happy that this year, as it turns out, all our merry band of four will be gathering for a shared meal after all.

With the Hub and both my babies at the table, food will be running a very slow second in the race for my attentive gratitude. Give me a chance to hang out with my family, and I am already one satisfied gal. Add to that the prospect of a (small! really!) piece of leftover pumpkin pie for breakfast the next morning, and it doesn't get much better.

One at a time please

2009-10-31T09:32:00.008-05:00

Happy Halloween!Raise your hand if you would like to spend a teensy bit more time focusing on the holiday at hand before rushing headlong into Thanksgiving and past that immediately on to Christmas. Hold your hands up high now, no need to be shy, we are all friends here....

I recently heard a complaint that the stores were already filling with Christmas decorations and we haven't even started Advent yet.

Now, Advent, for those of you not familiar with a Church Calendar, is a run up of days spent waiting for the "advent" of Christ into the world, born as a baby in our imaginations each year on the arbitrarily selected date of December 24th. It lasts four weeks, so counting is begun 4 Sundays before Christmas Eve whenever that falls, and as a church season, Advent has a liturgy all its own, has colors and rites and hymns and even a bit of home decor.

You've seen those sets of candles available around Halloween - the three purple and one pink sets? Those are for Advent wreaths, with the purple and pink representing the Roman Catholic variation of the theme and Lutherans (my denomination) more typically using blue candles.

I go either way, depending on the year. A candle is lit each Sunday of the Advent season, along with special prayers and layered in symbolism week to week. All these observances meant to focus attention on getting ready, being prepared, on the idea that the waiting, the sense of not here yet but on its way, is something not to rush in, or out of.

So, as somebody who has always liked the poignant expectant nature of Advent, the appearance of the many Thanksgiving themed food articles and magazines when we have not yet cleared the Halloween hoop, is something I find mildly distressing.

Because today is Halloween doggone it, and even though I will not dress up or go house to house for candy, I realized I have developed a dinnertime strategy for the interrupted nature of the evening meal for this holiday that includes the preparation of one or two traditional (for us) dishes.The requirements for a reasonable Halloween dinner evolved. As we moved past the requirement to actually accompany our own children as they trick or treated, we yet needed something that can be prepared ahead of time, something that would forgive the leaving off of eating and coming back, something that wouldn't cool off unpleasantly quickly or be spoiled if left to itself for a bit as we answered the door for a relatively steady stream of candy seeking costumed neighborhood children.

And so it came to be that we rotate back and forth year to year between Tortilla Soup or Chicken Chile Stew. This year is a Chicken Chile Stew year as it turns out, and mine is merrily bubbling away stovetop as I write.

This recipe is one of the few I feel is truly "mine". I put this stew together originally to use up leftover turkey after Thanksgiving one year. It turned out so well that after I reprised it several more times past that with the more easily secured boneless skinless chicken breasts, the whole turkey idea of origin simply faded away,

Here is the current incarnation in a pared down version for two. This stew can be made more souplike with the addition of more stock, and can be served as readily with rice or noodles in place of the potatoes. It is made special with the flavors of green chiles and crema added in, and is great with any sort of toasty warm bread product. We've enjoyed this with naan, flour tortillas, Challah, biscuits and sourdough rolls (though not all at the same time).Chicken Chile Stew
Serves 2 generously

1 whole large chicken breast (skinless boneless) cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 small onion chopped
1/2 cup diced celery
1/2 teaspoon dried cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried sage
2-3 carrots cut in 1/2 inch pieces (about 1 cup)
2 small cans Hatch chopped green chiles
2 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 cup peeled chopped potato
2 cups water
salt, pepper to taste
1 tablespoon oil
1/4 to 1/3 cup Crema [or sour cream]

Place oil in stock pot over medium high heat and brown chicken pieces on all sides. Lower heat to medium, add onion, celery, cumin and sage. Cook, stirring occasionally until onions are translucent (about 5 minutes).

Add carrots and green chiles, Stir well, deglazing pan, and add chicken stock. Simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.

Add potatoes and water, season to taste with salt and pepper. Cook over low heat until potatoes and carrots are tender and chicken pieces are fork tender.

The stew may hold at this point over low heat until ready to serve or may refrigerated at this point if made ahead.

When ready to serve, stir 1/4 to 1/3 cup of sour cream or crema into stew and ladle into bowls.

Notes: If you like your stews thicker, you may dredge your chicken pieces in flour prior to browning in oil or thicken with a cornstarch slurry prior to stirring in crema.For the best flavor of course, use your own home made chicken stock. If you don't have homemade stock, you might want to use thigh meat and/or chicken pieces with skin attached to get more of that chicken flavor in your dish. Otherwise the chile flavor will dominate which is ok if you are a green chile fan I suppose but not the point.As I mentioned before, this is delicious with any sort of bread alongside. I did try it with cornbread once, and the corn taste goes well with the green chiles no worries, but I like this much more with any sort of less crumbly bread product that will hold together and support my efforts to sponge every last drop of liquid out of my bowl at the end.

Final aside: I am not practiced at writing cooking instructions. If you have any questions about this please use the comments section and I'll do my best to clarify.

So there you have it. Just for a day like today, or more importantly, a night like tonight, a simple stew to provide dinner for two. If I'm fortunate this year and all the candy gets handed over to the younger set appearing in varying sized groups at the front door, I won't even miss having no sugary leftovers for dessert.

Happy Halloween, Y'all!

This Post Just Wrote Itself....

2009-10-27T10:51:00.005-05:00

Nah not really.

I read that in blog posts and think maybe it is true for them, but for me? There are stretches of days when I start to post but keep interrupting myself with visions of a T-shirt I saw that stated "nobody cares about your blog!". Or I'll recall a book by a big deal blog writing coach entitled "nobody cares what you ate for lunch".

I begin to think to myself is that what this is? Another "this is what I had for lunch post?".

Annnnd I slowly step away from the keyboard. Again.

I haven't been sitting around on my hands though. Far from it. I've got lots going on.

Some of my projects are well considered and clearly represent improvements. I consider others of my projects though and begin muttering to myself "OK Deb, is this charming....or just nuts? Eccentricity at play here or is it finally time to reserve that padded room?".Case in point:the other day after making stock I fished out and bleached these poultry vertebrae because as the retired manager for a neurosurgical practice, they spoke to me. (NO not out loud...artistic license for Pete's sake calm down).These aren't totally creepy are they? I mean, used in the right way as an element in combination with other items these small structurally intriguing bones could represent a fascinating glimpse into motion and how it is supported by our bodies. Right? (Right? Anybody???)

Honestly I see other people widely recognized as creative types out there with their whimsical garden elements {photo below from the wonderful Cheryl Goveia's garden and blog Conscious Gardening}and I'm inspired and think to myself "I can do that!".And, some of the time, I totally can.But I ask you, why is it that when I see a photo of something on anybody else's blog it looks totally legit and when I view something I feel is similar in my own spaces in real time I keep wondering if my neighbors occasionally wish me harm?

By now you are perhaps yawning politely behind your hand and wondering "when does this get to be about food because if I wanted to read about what you are doing in your crazy yard I'd be reading posts on your other blog, lady".

I do realize this blog by its own description is supposed to be food oriented and one cursory glance at my shape would assure even a casual observer "yes sirree that lady is sure enough eating!". But the cross blogging just seems to be happening lately. And, along with slightly cooler temperatures I've been either sticking to simple comfort foods such as meat loaf, or coming up with what turns out to be delicious dishes that I don't get a photo of because I'm just playing and not entirely sure how they'll turn out.Let's be real. You don't want to know how I make meat loaf now, do ya. You already have your own way to make meat loaf and I'm guessing yours is awesome for you like mine is amazing for me.

It all boils down to a certain lack of "here you go-ness!" lately. I can't say why but I am most definitely not taking things quite so much for granted. Can't say for sure what has my worldview jostled ever so slightly, maybe it is only the aftereffect of a summer's worth of desiccation. I'm definitely in the realm of the near miss/hunker down in the bunker tribe at the moment however.

Not rendered inactive, far from it. Just not quite so likely to "ta-DA" what I've been up to. That ever happen to you? Some sort of invisible to the naked eye cloak of hesitance ever settle in on you? Did it seem to be just what you expected or take you by surprise? Did you "do" anything about it or ride that pony to see where it would take you? I'm just curious....

In the meantime I'm keeping a critical eye out for just the right spot to stage my chicken bones. When I find it, you'll be among the first to know. You can thank me later.....

Condiment Wars

2009-10-17T08:32:00.011-05:00

Humorist Robert Benchley's Law of Distinction states there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don't.

I confess. I am a "two kinds of people" world splitter from way back.

This categorizing began for me as a very little girl when I first noticed that my original assumption, the one where the rest of the world was a carbon copy of my own family with the only variation being the different stage setting of their individual homes, was faulty.Without any blood relatives living close enough to visit regularly, my first tip-off to the amazing variety of "otherness" out there was discovered at the dinner tables of friends and neighbors.

Especially as I began to spend the night over at friend's houses, meal time became revelation time. What other families ate and how they fixed what they served offered me a fascinating glimpse into a realm of food possibilities I thought existed only in magazines.

What is boringly obvious to the adult was to my child self an earth shattering observation. Other Moms shopped in different grocery stores. Bought different brand names. Prepared different dishes or perhaps most shocking to me initially; prepared the same dishes we had at home but in a different way.

I still remember grinning as a second grader, sitting at her kitchen table with my friend Meredith for the first time, swinging my legs happily as I ravenously devoured what tasted just like my own Mom's deviled eggs. Only these eggs were mashed and chopped up, served between pieces of bread! They called it egg salad sandwich. I called it genius.

I could not wait to get home and share this startlingly innovative idea with my own Mom who was frustratingly unenthusiastic in response to my suggestion that the rest of our family be let in on this Egg Salad Sandwich secret I'd discovered.

Undeterred, I began angling for meal invitations to suss out the subtle and at times not so subtle variations on food themes as expressed at the tables of young girls in my acquaintance.

I'd try to assure our presence in the kitchen while lunch or dinner was being prepared. While a few especially bountifully stocked pantries shimmered with the prospect of choices galore, most homes had expressions of preferences clearly outlined by what was offered us by the Mom in charge as our meal or snack time options.

There were houses offering Coca-Cola, and others where only Pepsi products were found. There were those who favored sweet pickles and those who were all dill all the way. Potato or corn chips? Bunny bread or whole wheat? Ready made bottled juices or pitchers made from concentrate?

I began to see eating with my friends as a way to vicariously sample how other people lived.Nowhere did the dividing line become more clearly expressed than with condiments. There was never, in my experience, a home where any choice was offered between mayonnaise or Miracle Whip dressing. If you wanted white stuff on your sandwich you got whatever they had which I later realized was (probably) going to be whatever the Mom of the house (or whoever did the grocery shopping) personally preferred.

I grew up unquestioningly eating what my Mother liked best, Kraft Mayonnaise. The Hub grew up eating what his Mother liked best, Kraft Miracle Whip. They look the same. They are made by the same company. Is there a difference?

Well, yes. For starters Miracle Whip is sweeter to the taste, but has fewer calories. This is partly due to a lower oil content, which prohibits Kraft from calling it "mayonnaise".

According to Real Simple's blurb on the topic, Miracle Whip, introduced in 1933 at the Chicago World's Fair, was premiered by Kraft as a Depression Era lower priced alternative to mayonnaise.

That makes the choice even more compelling as a matter of taste preference. My ever frugal Mom recycled the syrup from cans of fruit into the pitchers of reconstituted fruit juice she served us rather than dump that liquid she has paid "good cash money for" down the sink.

She didn't buy any brand that was more expensive if there was an acceptable alternative taste wise. But she consistently paid more for mayonnaise and never, EVER bought Miracle Whip. She just didn't like the taste.

When the Hub and I established our own home together, after an aborted attempt to eat mustard alone, it rapidly became clear neither one of us would easily or happily abandon our childhood ideal of what was the correct white spread to slather on a sandwich.

Thus, a truly hybrid pantry home was formed between us, one where both Miracle Whip AND Mayonnaise would be ever present. It was too difficult to choose so we chose not to choose.

Clearly I am not the only one who has noted this tendency to stick with whatever a person grew up eating. The recent ad campaign by the folks at Miracle Whip is (rather ingeniously I'll admit) playing with challenging that treasured 18-34 year old cohort to rebel against the majority (presumably as represented by their parents) who typically use mayonnaise products as the go-to sandwich spread.I'm not the only one to find the idea of Rebel with a Jar amusing. No less trenchant a social critic than Stephen Colbert had this to say recently on the subject:

Your turn to throw a knife in the jar. When it comes to your own sandwich making, are you a mayonnaise or a Miracle Whip person? If you are all mayo all the time, do you have brand loyalty? Are you one of the die-hard Hellman's/Best fans or do you buy what is available or what is less expensive? I mindlessly bought Kraft for years because that was what my Mom liked until I did a taste test of my own and discovered I liked Hellman's better.

Do you make your own mayonnaise fresh as needed and eschew the big jar of white altogether? We're all friends here - weigh in with your comments and let's clear this up.

What goes best between two pieces of bread?

RIP Gourmet (Sorry, I'm so so so sorry.....)

2009-10-14T08:16:00.019-05:00

There seem to be as many types of responses as there are stages of grief surfacing over the recently announced death of Gourmet magazine.

I will admit, the end of Gourmet Magazine does seem to spell the end of some sort of era. There are those like Paige Orlof,genuinely eulogizing, seeking out family members for solace and respectfully reflecting how much the magazine has meant to her over the span of years, speculatively sharing how much she among so many others will miss her monthly copy.

Orlof's response along with others like hers, seems to reasonably fall within various stages of depression moving towards acceptance. As advised, one ought not try to hustle anybody through from one stage to the next, allowing time and grieving to do their own work.

There are others unfortunately stuck in some sort of earlier denial/anger stage, insisting on finger pointing as potentially typified by these dueling op ed pieces (delightfully or annoyingly, depending on your stance, playing out further in the comments sections for each) about whether food blogs and their authors are to be blamed for the failure of what many considered the flagship of high end food publications.Christopher Kimball in his NYT piece, Gourmet to All That, seems to feel food bloggers exemplify What is Wrong with American Food Writing Today. Kimball writes "The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million instant pundits, where an anonymous Twitter comment might be seen to pack more resonance and useful content than an article that reflects a lifetime of experience, experts are not created from the top down but from the bottom up."

In reply, Adam Roberts, aka the Amateur Gourmet posted A Response to C. Kimball wherein he proposes that "while the medium may continue to change, cream still rises to the top".I am no expert and I am most definitely not a dairy product. But because my Momma raised me to always be polite, especially about the dead, as one of some supposed thirty three thousand food bloggers on the internet*, I want to be near the front of the line to offer my personally-public apology to Ruth Reichland her readership, for taking Gourmet off the newstands.Ms. Reichl, Mr. Kimball, Interweb, and American Public in the form of my dozen (on a great day) readers: I am very very sorry my food blog killed your beloved Gourmet Magazine.

I did not mean for that to happen and I really, truly am sorry my blog posts are the reason this acclaimed magazine will no longer appear in mailboxes or on neighborhood newsstands.

If I had any idea my food blog would crash Gourmet magazine I would have never selfishly persisted in posting. I would most certainly take Eater's offer of twenty five dollars to shut my blog down forever, potentially even using that money to buy a subscription all my own to Gourmet which would clearly still be flourishing except for me and my incredibly influential two (to twelve!) regular readers.

I plead ignorance as my only defense.

After watching all the predictions come true as one by one MTV eliminated radio stations; VCRs eliminated movie theaters; online music sales eliminated record companies; and most recently Kindle eliminated all the publishing houses, I simply should have known the internet generally, and my food blog specifically, would be responsible for taking down the Gourmet empire.

I turned a blind eye to the facts, interweb, and I selfishly insisted on irregularly putting posts out where people could choose to read them if they wanted to. I was wrong, I was not acting in the best interests of Condé Nast, and now there are people who have lost their jobs because of me and my blog.

Taking this model out to its logical conclusion, I wish to preemptively apologize to the people working long and hard at the presumably similarly doomed Traveller magazine. Apparently your necks will be next on the line.I have willfully shared my vacation photos with friends and family all these years which will obviously be responsible, sooner if not later, for bringing about the demise of Traveller magazine.

I am sorry, I am ashamed, and I can only hope you will forgive me. I really had no idea.....

*I cannot say if the statement there are some thirty-three thousand food bloggers is correct. I just know I read it somewhere - probably on a food blog....

Slow Feast in the Field

2009-10-13T09:11:00.005-05:00

Doesn't this look cool? I am a big fan of these schools although truth be told, neither ChefSon nor LawSchoolGirl attended, back in the day. No mind - check this out and see if you don't want to support the cause.

From the press release:

SLOW FEAST IN THE FIELD AT GREEN GATE FARMS
Third Annual Benefit for Unique Public Charter School

Austin, TX - October 10, 2009 - On Saturday evening, October 24, 2009, Green Gate Farms will host its third annual Slow Feast in the Field celebrating local, naturally grown, freshly harvested food to benefit the Austin Discovery School (ADS).

This magical evening will feature a progressive five-course gourmet meal served outdoors at the historic Bergstrom homestead. Guests will dine on seasonal fare surrounded by fields of produce. The menu will feature heirloom vegetables and Duroc/Berkshire pork raised at the farm and prepared by Chef Jesse Bloom of Ecstatic Cuisine.

“We look forward to hosting this event each year because Austin
Discovery School is one of the most innovative elementary schools in
Austin,” says Erin Flynn, co-founder of Green Gate Farms, a family-owned and operated sustainable farm eight miles east of downtown
Austin. “Putting on this feast is such fun: the farm twinkles and the
food is divine.”

Local sponsors include: Slow Food Austin, Sweet Leaf Tea, Richard’s Rain Water, Marquee Event Group, Flat Creek Estate, Stacey Hoyt Events, Mary Louise Butters Brownies, Elixer Coffee, Texas Olive Ranch, Good Flow Honey, and Texas Medicinals.

This intimate dining experience is limited to 100 guests. The Austin Discovery School will use funds from the event to support it’s innovative programs, which include one of the county’s most established organic Junior Master Gardener® programs. Tickets are $100 per plate.

because I can, that's why

2009-10-10T16:32:00.002-05:00

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

And this is why

2009-10-07T10:14:00.004-05:00

I cannot (cough, ahem!) clean up the stacks on my desk, thanks.Seriously, how could I pass up watching my latest editor do her balancing act otherwise?Obviously, it is tiring work. But, a cat's gotta do what a cat's gotta do.

Something of a Stretch

2009-10-06T10:01:00.014-05:00

Pay no attention to that man with the yam.

The inland oats and the oak trees have called it.Still needing the A/C running occasionally or not, it is by golly FALL.

And this past week especially I have been happy as happy can be for some slightly cooler temperatures, allowing me to reintroduce some cooler weather favorites back into our mealtime rotation.

I'll admit nothing original here, just some inspired borrowing and what I consider to be necessarily frugal and slightly more ethical reworking of ingredients to inventively stretch animal protein. Allow me to explain?

Serving as a first example of an old reliable in that category, a Niman Ranch shoulder roast. My Mom used to call beef fixed this way Pot Roast. It is a straight out braised roast really, cut into a few large chunks, with some of the resulting sumptuous meat pieces first appearing over a half baked potato liberally doused with braised onions and the eponymous liquid from the pot.

That braised beef next showed up neatly tucked into chimichangas. I use up small portions of pork or beef or chicken this way regularly, shredding the meat, moistening it with pesto or salsa, adding a bit of grated cheese and wrapping it all in butter softened flour tortilla bundles that are then pricked with a fork and baked for 15-20 minutes in a hot oven until toasty brown. Using smaller sized tortillas makes for great portion control and leftover chimichangas travel and reheat well for quick lunches.I put the third and final bit of the beef put to work center stage in a hash, costarring with a farm fresh egg, over easy. Hash is dead simple to make, there are all sorts of reliable guides to preparation out there and once you top it with egg it is all kinds of crazy good for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

As reliable and delicious as braised beef is (and oh boy is it ever!), I think the real winner around here lately is this recipe from 101 Cookbook's Heidi Swanson for a Rustic Cabbage Soup. As these things go, it was not the featured recipe for her recent post, but a link in that post to a previous entry from January of last year.

I began following Swanson's site to find recipes that could help me in my attempts to have us eat less animal protein.

I did add Nilgai sausage to the recipe (a gift from a hunter friend of the family). While that may seem counterintuitive to my stated purpose, let me hasten to add that whenever I add animal protein to a soup or stew, it stretches those protein servings out, so while the Hub and I are still getting our desired animal bits, we are getting them fewer and further in between while not losing anything in taste or enjoyment. Baby steps, y'all.The Rustic Cabbage Soup recipe is rich and delicious and I recommend it to you as written, or, if substituting in a link of sausage, just brown it with the onions and garlic and skip the addition of white beans. I especially appreciated how, after cooking the potato pieces first in oil, they held together as a discrete element in the soup rather than simply giving it up to the broth. I'll be incorporating that little trick into other dishes I'm sure. And isn't that a great part of the fun of cooking? Figuring out how these techniques are used to get a certain desired result so you can more confidently wing it when you want to, is the name of the game.

I spooned a little Crema on top to slightly offset the jalapeño liberally included in our sausages. We had the soup for dinner with a spinach and upland cress salad alongside. I sprinkled the greens with bits of organic pear and crumbled toasted pecans and coated it all lightly with a a rice wine vinaigrette.I offered toasted La Brea sourdough (now baked fresh daily at Wheatsville) slathered with Irish butter alongside and I promise you, nobody pushed away from the table feeling they'd been slighted in any way.

Finally, I want to offer a word of encouragement to anybody out there who has not yet made a batch of applesauce this season. If you are anything like me, you've gotten quite used to the array of applesauce offerings on the shelves at the store, and perhaps, as I did, you sometimes forget how pleasing and how easy home made really is.I can't begin to describe how satisfying it was to slowly peel and pare a 3 pound bag of apples, knowing I'd have several generous helpings of applesauce as a healthy dessert alternative to offer after that small effort.

Maybe it is just me being weirdly me, but I love to peel stuff. With a nice sharp knife in hand I get very much into the process, appreciating the textures, making progress in my pile of "to be peeled" versus my pieces of "ready for the pot". I find it quite meditative. And the smell! That wonderful aroma of apples cooking is as much an observation and seasonal celebration as anything I can imagine short of carving a pumpkin.

If all you need is a gentle nudge to remind you to make applesauce!, consider it done. Buy a bag of organic apples and make yourself a batch of applesauce while the supply is abundant, won't you? And, try Swanson's rustic soup. You can eat it right away as she suggests, or try my preference which is to let it sit overnight in the refrigerator for the flavors to fully develop before reheating and serving. It is wonderfully hearty and representative of some of Fall's best offerings.

Whether the thermometer is reinforcing your feeling of the season or not, Fall is here, the trees and the plants all know it, so be sure to find your own way to immerse yourself and enjoy it while it lasts.