Surely I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve got major issues with Laundry. At some point while writing my thesis, I stopped wearing socks because I didn’t have time to find matching pairs. These days, I have a little more time, but the laundry still builds up in huge piles that have to threaten the pets safety before I get around to dealing with them.
But I’m not sure why. Laundry time is always fun in our house. Look what it results in:
* Today’s photo processing brought to you by Laura’s laziness and Picassa’s “I’m feeling lucky” button.
There are several interesting features in the bottom photo:
Do you see that Lucy is actually leaning against Oliver!?!
The money on the dresser: about $40 that was washed with my laundry. Howard says he would be worried if $40 was missing from his wallet. I say life is better when you don’t remember that $40 is missing from your wallet. And then when it shows up in the laundry, it’s like a bonus.
Howard’s hair: that’s not just the flash — he’s going grey! I think his salt and pepper hair is nice, though.
After laundry time, it was ice cream time, also a very exciting event:
I didn’t have an ice cream. I was too full of the sweet and savory pies I made this weekend. They were really yummy.
Sudden desire for a pudding one night lead to the exhuming of an old favourite. The sort of thing we learn to make when we first go flatting, really, ‘cos it’s so easy & the ingredients are always in the pantry. And just the thing on which to use up the left-over whipped cream in the fridge! I think you could make it more interesting than this recipe by adding, I don’t know, dried cranberries or chopped glacé cherries to the mix. And sometimes I double the amount of cocoa in the mix (not the sauce), to give it a stronger, darker appeal. Anyway, it goes down a treat.
So, sift 1 cup self-raising flour & 2 tspn cocoa into a bowl. Add ¾ cup sugar. Melt 2 tbspn of butter and stir in, then add ½ cup of milk. Pour into a pie dish.
For the sauce combine ½ cup brown sugar & 2 tspn cocoa. Sprinkle this on top of the mix and then gently pour over 1 ¼ cups boiling water. Put in a moderate oven and bake for around 45 minutes.
My friend’s wife went to Taiwan for a month. Maria and I invited him and another couple to our house for a 家常飯 “jia1 chang2 fan4,” or 便飯 “bian4 fan4” which literally means a casual dinner.
I made many side dishes and a few main dishes using simple ingredients and light seasoning. Many of them were vegetable dishes more suitable for summer time.
Several of them came out very nice but Chicken stuffed with sweet rice was a huge disappointment.
The following two were excellent:
Sweet pepper stuffed with shrimp and tofu with oyster sauce reduction. I added cilantro to shrimp and tofu to enhance its flavor.
Deep-fried tofu with plums and dates in honey and wine sauce. The thick and savory sauce complemented the tofu nicely. It was simple to do as well but it took almost one hour to achieve the desired consistency at very low heat.
You might call both dishes 功夫菜 ”gong1 fu1 cai4” because both took a long time and extra efforts to make.
I also made this vegetable dish which was a healthy addition at the end: snow peas, winter bamboo shoots and 白果 “bai2 guo3.” 白果 “bai2 guo3” is the seed of 銀杏樹 “yin2 xin4 shu4” or Ginkgo. 銀杏樹 “yin2 xin4 shu4” has been found as early as 270 million years ago and are widely available in China and other parts of the world including the United States, Canada, Korea and Japan. It can grow up to 120’ tall with trunk as big as 12’ in diameter.白果“bai2 guo3” has long been used for cooking and medicine in China. It is said that 白果“bai2 guo3” is good for asthmas patients and older men with frequent urines problems, among other benefits.
This is what ginko’s leaf looks like.
I’ll do the deep-fried tofu with plums and dates again because it is a such an easy dish to make. It is also a crows pleaser too.
I love cooking, watching cooking shows, watching others cook and especially watching people eat the food served. I like serving lots of food in big bowls on the table for people to enjoy. I’ve never been into serving individual portions because I am so afraid of plating – there’s so much pressure to get it right. Needless to say it is not my strongest point.
When I was growing up, I hated cooking. It was a chore I needed to learn ’cause all women, according to my parents, needed to learn how to cook. It wasn’t until I was living in London’s Ladbroke Grove, a stone’s throw away from Portobello markets, that I became interested in cooking. All that fresh food, new types of food I’ve never used or eaten, spices I’ve never smelt and the variety of cheeses and bread – wow. And I was going out with this guy who introduced me to all of this and liked trying new food as much as I did.
So I started experimenting with food. And if I may say so, I became very good at cooking and enjoy serving good food – it’s like an everyday gift I give to people I love.
It probably goes without saying that fabric has a strong effect on me. Therefore, an amazing fabric store can pretty much put me into a state of disproportionate ecstasy (it can also seriously stress me out; making choices in this type of situation is painful). So discovering Portsmouth Fabric (portsmouthfabric.com) this past weekend (not to mention the absolutely charming town of Portsmouth, NH itself) was more than a little thrilling. This is one beautiful fabric store. It’s basically overflowing with gorgeous, contemporary fabrics—and it has to have the best selection of quarter packs I have ever seen. After some seriously indecisive back-and-forth decision making (and the generous financial support of my patient boyfriend who also earned major brownie points by waiting in the fabric store and at least pretending to have strong feelings about the various samples I showed him), I settled on these two:
One is Kaffe Fassett and the other Anna Maria Horner (garden party). You pretty much can’t go wrong with Fassett, but I’ll admit I was a little surprised to find myself so attracted to these simple stripe patterns. The others were just too wonderfully bright and cheerful to pass up. But the fabric hording doesn’t end there. My next decision was easy since I immediately fell in love with this print by from the Wonderland collection by Momo for Moda Fabrics.
There’s just something so cute and whimsical about the little patterned circles, I couldn’t resist. And if you’re not yet convinced that I have a bit of a fabric sickness, wait for it; I got so excited thinking about this fabric at about 3 am on Sunday morning that I woke up and started sewing. And I didn’t stop (save for a brief swim) until I had completed this:
Again, I love those puffy sleeves, and the tie makes it a little more interesting than your average shirt. My apparel-sewing skills are coming along; after the Tasmania jacket, this felt pretty straightforward.
Amazingly, that’s not all I did with my Sunday. Ready for a little break from the sewing machine (though surprisingly not too miserably tired), I spent some time in the kitchen making yet another patchworky pasta for my weekday lunches. Here’s what I started with:
Cauliflower, broccoli, sweet corn, onion, tuna (not shown), parmesan cheese… and blueberries. I realize the last ingredient on the list may not be the first thing people expect in a pasta but they worked out beautifully. In fact, since I heated them with the broccoli and sweet corn, the berries got nice and soft and infused the pasta with a wonderful soury-sweet flavor (and blue color) that complemented the corn perfectly.
However, I have reservations about the sauce; blended cauliflower with milk and cheese (mainly motivated by a desire to use the cauliflower that I for some reason purchased). I think I’ll go for a stronger cheese or cream sauce next time and perhaps some goat cheese to give the overall dish a bit more punch. Still, it was a satisfying midday meal all week long. I have big plans for next week’s pasta; stay tuned.
I tend to get into modes and, as may be obvious, I’m currently in a pasta-and-fool mode (which I don’t’ see ending any time soon). So it’s probably no surprise that my other culinary concoction of the week was fool; mango-lime to be exact. I went for a high fruit-to-whip ratio this time, since fool runs the risk of being too mild without lots of added sugar. The lime also helped by adding a penetrating flavor that, after soaking up the mango, distributed it well throughout the cream.
Yes, I cheated and used pre-squeezed lime juice (I do have a life, after all) but the beauty of fool is how quick and easy it is–and I did get real lime for the garnish! You can literally whip it up (haha; almost as bad as my ‘fool for fool’ pun) in a couple hours, most of which are spent waiting for the fruit to cool.
As for my sourdough adventures, my family’s return meant the air conditioning went back on full-force, and my yeast did not respond well to this. So I was all prepared to start baking last Sunday, only to discover that my bubbly, stinky friend was a little less bubbly than I would have liked. I quickly moved him to the warmer basement where he has come back to life full-force (even exploding out of his class jar a bit and making quite a mess). And, since it’s going to be fiercely raining this weekend (and I’ll have to hold off on fabric dying again; sigh), I think I’m finally ready for my first sourdough!
But amidst all the new fabrics, cooking, etc., I’m still plugging away at an old project, enjoying those finishing stages that always feel so relaxed and satisfying. My essay quilt is now being hand-tied (a perfect activity to do over evening wine with my mom and sister). I made a color choice that for me is utterly shocking and decided that all black ties would be best to complement the different patches and match the black text.
It’ll be gratifying to have this done, but I’m in no major rush to finish since, like I said, the final touches are fun—and I’m hardly in desperate need of another quilt!
All 20 of Italy’s regions have specific culinary traditions but most have at least one or two signature dishes that are on almost every menu in the region. One of the most ubiquitous and the most delicious of Ligurian treats is their homemade squiggly pasta called trofie which are generally served with pesto. Pesto can be made in a number of ways. The basic pesto ingredients are basil, garlic, pinoli nuts, cheese and oil. In Liguria, many cooks add green beans and potatoes to the dish. You can either purchase pesto or make it at home.
The pasta is a bit more laborious but here is a great recipe from a blog by Helen Rennie. Buying trofie in New York can present somewhat of a challenge but fresh pasta producers such as Raffetto’s in the West Village or Borgattis on Arthur Avenue would be a good place to begin your search.
If all of this seems too much, you can hop over to Scuderia on 6th Avenue and order this lovely dish. A great wine to drink while eating pesto is the local Vermentino, a white wine which is made in Liguria, in parts of Tuscany and in Sardinia. The best Vermentino from Liguria come from an area called Colli di Luni. This summer dish is light and is always a crowd pleaser at dinner parties as well.
Often overlooked by tourists who opt to vacation in Tuscany, Liguria has much to offer. Renowned for its small picturesque villages perched on hills overlooking the Mediterranean, it is also a wonderful place to hike as well as scuba dive or sail. Many northern Italians tend to spend their weekends here and part of the summer. Liguria can also be a great place to vacation with young children as the sea is relatively shallow and calm close to the shoreline. On your next visit, keep Liguria in mind for a holiday jaunt. You won’t be disappointed.
Growing up, autumn meant sunny days and chilly nights, bright fall foliage, newly-sharpened pencils, and a certain tang to the air that was just filled with promise. It was a time of new beginnings, just before winter set in and forced us all to cozy up for short days and long, cold nights. Where I now live, autumn means one thing: rain. After Niek and I bought our current house, September held a certain dread as we tried to keep ahead of the rain’s damage – it can rain so hard and so often that the ground around the house literally washes away. We’ve wakened to actual pits in the front and back yard where only the evening before there was dirt, sand, and paving stones, and have had to call in for partial truckloads of sand to replace what was lost. Just from rain! I know there are other parts of the world that suffer much worse from heavy seasonal rains, but I have to admit that I feel more than just a tad sorry for my loss of gorgeous foliage and crisp, sunny days. Here’s this week’s pictorial weather forecast. Sigh.
But like cold Maine winters force everyone inside for cozy pastimes, so does this autumn rain. Arden’s recently become very interested in books and I snapped a few pictures of him going through one of his new magnetic board books. You can stick the magnet onto the illustration to make something new – it was very popular on the plane trip, and continues to be a favorite now that we are home.
Of course this sort of weather also brings out the comfort foods. Tonight we’ll be enjoying garlic smashed potatoes with lemon-pepper fish and a salad. We had chili earlier in the week, to everyone’s satisfaction. What sort of recipes do you trot out for the change in season?
Most of all, the dreary weather means finding extra delight in cross stitching. Yesterday I completed my Prairie Schooler exchange and also worked a bit further on the new design shown in the previous post. The eyelet alphabet is soothing work to do. Today I’ll put the last stitches on my Blackbird Designs exchange so I can make a trip to the post office and get everything sent out at once.
Here’s hoping that you and yours are enjoying whatever Mother Nature is bringing your way!
Being in an actual house, I think I’m starting to feel like an actual housewife. I’m doing laundry a lot more now. Not that I didn’t do it regularly before, but… It’s more fun now. It might be that I’m still in the honeymoon phase with the front loaders, but that’s okay. I’m always picking up around the house, I’m putting the dishes away quicker, keeping the counters cleared off. I’m making lunches at night, preparing the girls’ things for school before I go to bed. I feel like Donna Reed. (If you don’t know who Donna Reed is, then think of some more modern TV mom who cooked and cleaned while wearing a dress and heels. And didn’t have an attitude. Actually, finish reading this post first and then come back to that, because it’ll take you a while.)
I am even cooking more.
Oh, yes! It is true! I even got to burn something for the first time last night! RICE! Do you know just how wonderful burnt rice smells throughout your house?
It isn’t very wonderful at all, I have to say.
And frankly… I’m sorry, my domesticated friends. I apologize to you, those of you that enjoy spending time in your kitchens…
I’m not all that thrilled with this whole cooking thing.
First, there’s the raw meat. Try as I might, I just… Okay, I’m gagging just writing about it. Chicken, especially. Raw chicken is the worst, and of course that’s what we like to eat most. I’m not so bad with the lean ground beef. Oh, but when I make a breakfast casserole and I’m browning the sausage… *choke*
Enough of that.
Then there are the smells. Is it in every house that the scent of whatever meal you’re making permeates through every room? I thought I would be done with that when I got out of the apartment! And my clothes! My clothes smell like dinner! I want to change my clothes after I’m done cooking! But I don’t have that many clothes! I thought the smells of dinner wafting through the air were supposed to be good! And it’s not like I’m a bad cook and ruining the food, but they’re just always there!
I bought a candle today to help with that.
The Husband is awesome when it comes to cleaning up after dinner, especially if I’ve prepared it. So that part has improved. I don’t mind cleaning up the plates after we’re done eating. I have a hard time cleaning up the items that were used to prepare the meal. I don’t know why. Maybe there’s some kind of phobia or aversion to all things cooking-related…
Wow, Google is cool.
Mageirocophobia. FEAR OF COOKING.
I sure as heck can’t pronounce it, but I may be on to something here…
Wow, from nothing much happening we’ve suddenly been going hammer and tongs in homesteading type activities. In a delightful twist to our Sunday afternoon scheduling, we ended up at the beach down the road with friends harvesting muscles, clams and even a few pippis. Hugh (of River Cottage fame) would have been proud. We managed to get a substantial enough hoard of sea goodies to make an amazing pasta dinner.
There really is nothing finer then eating a feast of food harvested and cooked by your own hands. The only way to have improved this dish would have been to make the pasta ourselves (we ran short of time, but next time for sure).
First I washed the shell fish in the laundry sink, getting rid of excess sand. Then I steamed them open in batches (discarding any that didn’t open). I then scooped out the insides and pulled the beards off the muscles. A dash of riesling to complete the reduction, pasta into a pot of boiling water and voila! A meal to drool over.
On the Target product check on TV3 tonight, they road-tested store bought pancake mixes. The host pointed out that the most basic pancake recipes only have 4 ingredients, so it’s a little disturbing when the ingredients listed on a pre-mix constitute an entire paragraph!
So in an endeavour to save you from the supermarket shelves, and maybe encourage you to branch out from the Edmonds Cook Book, I share with you our favourite pancake recipe (Dave should know a good pancake, seeing he grew up eating off the griddle an’ all!)
1 c. flour 1 tbsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. baking soda 2 tbsp. vegetable oil 3 tbsp. sugar 1 c. milk 1 egg 1/2 tsp. salt
Combine dry ingredients. Add milk, egg and oil. Mix until smooth. Heat non-stick pan over medium heat until water beads. Do not oil. Pour pancake mixture in 1/4 cup amounts. Turn when tops are covered with bubbles and edges look cooked. Remove from heat when pancake stops steaming.
These are THE BEST pancakes, we have them every Sunday. This week Dave added chocolate chips and they were divine. I love them with butter, lemon and sugar – that’s definitely the kiwi-connection as DJ considers this the most absurd topping ever.
There will surely be a few more BBQs to attend before the quickly approaching end of summer, and macaroni salad is always a hit. We made this for the pie-eating contest and ended up with tons extra and ended up eating it for days afterwards. You see, when we were factoring in how much food we’d need for the two or three dozen people we were expecting, we completely forgot that many people might not have a lot of room left in their bellies after eating a whole pie at warp speed. And, although it’s sometimes iffy, everyone who committed to it showed up with a potluck item, which meant we had tons of food. We got to enjoy a lot of leftovers.
So, if you’ve got one more potluck to attend this summer, you can whip up this macaroni salad. Otherwise, stick it in the recipe log for next summer or for a night when you cook burgers indoors during winter.
Ingredients
1 pound whole wheat elbow macaroni
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
1/2 sweet onion, finely chopped
3 green onions, finely chopped
a few stalks of fresh dill, finely chopped (if you don’t have this, finely chop a pickle and toss it in there)
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup milk (some recipes call for buttermilk, but I never have this in the house and just used regular milk, figuring the vinegar in the recipe would do the trick)
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard
1-2 tablespoons white sugar, depending on how sweet you like your macaroni salad
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 garlic clove, minced
freshly ground pepper
Directions
Prepare macaroni according to package directions, following with a cool rinse to stop the cooking. Toss the carrot, celery, and onions in with the cool pasta. .
In a separate bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, milk, vinegar, mustard, sugar, cayenne pepper, garlic, salt and pepper. Pour the dressing over the macaroni/veggie combo, and stir with a spatula to thoroughly distribute the dressing. Cover and refrigerate for several hours if you’ve got the time, but it will be darn tasty if you don’t.
If you’re serving this salad at a BBQ or other outdoor event, try to leave a portion of it inside in the fridge while serving the other portion, as this does spoil. The leftovers are even better after sitting in the fridge overnight, so you don’t want to put the whole bowl out in the sun and have the extras go to waste.
I started making this burger about five years ago, inspired by a copy of Bon Appétit that was laying office mailroom. It was probably the best looking hamburger I had seen in my life to that moment. Its soft potato bun contrasted sharply with the dark caramelized beef and andouille sausage patty and golden brown caramelized onions, accented even further with a dollop of– is that blue cheese??? I had to make this burger.
I first perused the list of ingredients: pecans, andouille sausage, ground chuck for the patties. Pickled okra, watercress, caramelized onions, chipotle mayo, blue cheese for the accoutrements. And that delicious squishy potato bun. I decided to make my own version, since I had no interest in finding out where to buy pickled okra (this was back before Rick’s Picks put everything under the sun in a brine and sold it at the farmer’s market for six bucks).
I first caramelized the onions, since I knew that would take a while to do. They weren’t getting as sweet as I wanted, so I decided to add some maple syrup. ”Why not,” I asked myself.
“Whyyyyy,” I asked myself when the finished product tasted like the bottom of a trash can at IHOP. So I redid those (luckily I had an extra couple of onions), and went back on my merry way.
I toasted the pecans, keeping a close eye on them to make sure they didn’t burn. The great pecan incident of 2001 lingered fresh in my mind. The apartment smelled like a burned out brush fire for days. That was really a hit with the ladies. Once the pecans were done, maybe 15 minutes later, I ground them up and added them to a mixture of ground chuck and andouille sausage. A touch of salt and pepper later, I was ready to make some patties.
Now, the art of patty-making is one of which I am not a master. They are either: a) too thin; b) too small; c) too fat, and end up swelling up like meatballs; or d) perfection. So, in this area, I cannot really tell you what to do. No matter what shape they are, they taste good, so don’t let a few misshapen burgers stop you.
Now that the patties were done, it was time to hit the grill. I got the grill to a nice medium-high temperature– if you can hold your hand over the coals for about 3-4 seconds, you’re probably golden. The grill is going to get hotter when the fat starts rendering off the patties, anyway, so if it’s a little cool at this point, that’s just fine.
I threw the patties on for about 4 minutes a side, so they were a perfect medium rare. The andouille sausage is pre-cooked, so I wasn’t too concerned about that (although my OCD forced me to check the label around 50 times). After I took the patties off, I let them rest on a tray for a few minutes, so that all of the juices could gather themselves. In the meantime, I grilled up the buns for a minute per side (the grill gets pretty hot, so careful not to burn them).
Once this was done, I was ready for assembly. First, a little of mayo on the bottom bun. Then, the patty, topped with a little blue cheese, and then some of those caramelized onions, and then the watercress. Then, just for kicks, throw on a couple of pickles (or pickled okra, if you have hit the market lately), and a dollop of chipotle mayo (just mix mayo with as much chipotle as you like, it’s a personal thing). Place the bun on top and prepare to have your mind blown.
Needless to say, these burgers are a hit. I’ve made them probably around 25 times by this point, and they never fail. Now I’ve gotta run– I smell some pecans burning!
The original recipe as featured in Bon Appétit can be found here.
