Goodbye to great breakfasts
cute babies who endure mardi gras photo shoots
And their older sisters who enjoy it a little more
To domesticity
To Mad Hatter bridal showers
That migrate to the Buffalo Bar
Goodbye to all that and the lovely people of Silver City. It’s been an amazing month and I can’t wait to come back!
Until then,
Hello, Roatan.
It’s gonna be all diving and islands and adventure for the next 5 months. Stay tuned!
A lazy sunday with the Barretts in Louisiana starts with coffee on the porch of The Camp, overlooking Moss Lake
Several hours later, it progresses to Chris and Stephanie’s on the banks of the Contraband Bayou
where I expect to see a pirate ship at any moment but instead got a gator
A relaxed game of washers continues unabated
Light a fire
open some wine
Perhaps the less said about the pomegranate tequila the better…
Except for these empty glasses and smiling faces!
Play with the dog, Loux
Watch the sun set over the bayou
And finish the night with Bev’s amazing gumbo
The secret: use deer sausage and don’t skimp on the butter!
And the piece de resistance, Mardi Gras cupcakes:
Because the Mardi Gras madness starts tonight!
Brace yo’selves…
Normally baby showers aren’t my deal. I find them too cutesy with the hats made of wrapping paper and the silly games. However, my friend Missy invited me to her baby shower and I like her and her husband Jeremiah
Aren’t they cute? So I told her I’d go.
Missy and I met about 6 years ago on an opera version of Macbeth. In opera, the non-singing parts are called supernumeraries. In Macbeth, the female supernumeraries were witches all gussied up in vintage black and white dresses and veils. Missy was a super-witch and I was the super-witch dresser.
The opera ran for a week in Tucson and a weekend in Phoenix and I had a great time with the super-witches, drinking at Irish bars after the show and acting completely inappropriate on several occasions.
Since then, Missy and I have stayed in touch while I went on tour and she went to China and when I came back through AZ on my epic road trip, I spent Easter with her and Jeremiah and we went to the roller derby.
This girl clearly has good taste in friends because her girl friends threw her a dinner baby shower open to couples and kids and served “Breakfast for Dinner.”
With tater tots and pigs in blankets. How great is that?
Plus her friends are cool. I love going to a party where I know 2 people and staying much longer than I’d intended because I’m meeting really interesting people.
And when the mom-to-be proves that she can still do splits?
Then you know it’s the Best. Baby. Shower. Ever.
Happy baby shower Missy and Jeremiah! Can’t wait to meet Baby P.W.!
It’s National Donut Day! And for once, I’m not alone in my celebrations. Grocery stores, Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme are all giving away free donuts today; so, if you live near a donut chain, go down and claim a donut for yourself.
I spent a fair amount of time at Dunkin Donuts in college, especially late at night with my boyfriend. We were dramatic theatre kids and the late night Dunkin Donut scene was rich in atmosphere with its sketchy grizzled customers and the exhausted looking Indian woman behind the counter. We’d order coffee with lots of milk and sugar, talk about “character studies” and act like we fresh-faced 19 year olds belonged in such a place at 2AM.
We couldn’t get Krispy Kremes in Illinois because the South still owned the franchise and you couldn’t get them anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line. I first tasted Krispy Kremes on a spring break road trip down to Florida and thought the cream filled donuts were magnificent. I’ve not eaten many of them or liked them as well since the KK franchise took over the US. Some things are more appealing when you can only get them under limited circumstances.
But having neither Dunkin nor Krispy here in Bellingham, we made our own donuts today using two different recipes. We could have used only one or we could have halved the recipes, especially knowing that we’ve got cupcakes on the agenda this weekend and 2 birthdays next week, but we aren’t quitters like that. What’s the fun of one recipe if you can’t compare it to a different one? And why have one donut when you can have two? And why gain half a pound when you can gain a whole pound? Besides, I’m really doing it for you so you’ll have something to read and pictures to drool over on a Friday afternoon. See how I sacrifice for you?
You’re welcome.
We used a Gourmet recipe called Turkish Doughnuts with Rose Hip Syrup that Bet really likes and has made several times. We didn’t make the rose hip syrup but instead dusted them in cinnamon sugar.
Aren’t they pretty?
This kind of dough is close to the choux pastry used for cream puffs, comprised largely of flour, eggs and water. It’s time intensive and an arm workout with all the whipping and stirring and whisking but the donuts are incredibly light with a crispy shell that shatters when you bite into it and a soft tender middle full of holes.
Serious Yum.
We made some donut holes and some tiny donut rings. The rings cooked the most quickly and evenly but weren’t as tender on the inside. However, either way you get a crispy light-as-air donut that you can take down in two bites, which gives you time to consider a second one while you’re still licking cinnamon sugar off your lips.
On the vastly other hand, the second recipe for lemon – yogurt fritters comes from the Orangette website, created and run by Molly Wizenberg. Her website is phenomenal, I’ve made a few of her recipes and loved them but I didn’t like this one.
The heavier dough took a long time to cook, making it difficult to regulate the oil temperature. I cooked several batches, varying the temperature up and down in an attempt to cook the insides before the outsides burnt. I also made them much smaller than she recommended so they would cook faster, but still found them greasy after they drained. The mild lemon flavor couldn’t compete with the greasy crunchiness; so, at the end I had a bunch of fritters tasting mainly of… oil.
When sprinkled with powdered sugar they tasted of sugar and oil.
Boo.
I won’t make them again. If I did, I’d add lemon zest to the dough or drizzle them with lemon icing to give them some flavor. However, I’d rather eat the Turkish Donuts because they’re so much better.
But you? You should go make your own favorite recipe. Or go get a free one! Or come over here and sample one of each of ours and give us your opinion and then take some home with you. Get here quick, though; we’re giving them away as quickly as possible.
We’ve got cupcakes to think about.
Happy National Donut Day!
Castilla la Mancha! Yeah! That’s the holiday everyone’s been talking about!!
No?
Ok, probably not. As far as I can tell, Castilla La Mancha is a local independence celebration in Spain and who knows how they celebrate. I can barely find mention of the holiday, let alone celebration instructions and suggestions.
However, the holiday happens today, we have a killer paella recipe and I have all day to bake flan; so, in my world Castilla la Mancha is a celebration of Spanish-ish food. And who are you to say it isn’t?
It’s a good thing I had all day because flan is a time intensive undertaking. I used Pioneer Woman’s blog recipe here, eliminating all pumpkin and spices because who puts pumpkin in flan. Seriously?
I mostly followed the recipe for the caramel except for the part where she said not to take phone calls or answer the door or breathe after I start melting the sugar and instead I surfed the internet, updated my facebook status and occasionally peeked in on the caramel. Turns out the Pioneer lady might be a little codependent because the caramel did fine without me hovering. Most things do:
Then I made the custard without aid of a blender because in a kitchen outfitted with such specialty items as silpat mats and 12 different kinds of flour, my sister doesn’t own a blender. How is this possible? Does she not drink margaritas? Who even knows how people operate up here in the Northwest. For crying out loud, we whipped cream by hand the other day. By hand! The Pioneer lady would be proud.
The custard went fine without a blender; though the instructions to whisk eggs without incorporating air are akin to the Zen riddle about one hand clapping. How close do I have to be to Nirvana before that’s possible? After straining the custard about 200 times into every bowl in the house, it looked smooth and creamy (and air free!) so I looked at the instructions about baking and read these instructions:
1. Pour custard into the ramekins.
2. Put the baking dish in the oven.
3. Put the ramekins in the baking dish.
4. Pour hot water around ramekins.
5. Cover the ramekins with foil.
6. Bake.
Basically, the Pioneer Lady wants me set up ramekins of custard and fill a baking pan with boiling water in the heat blast of an open oven door while my face bursts into flame. And not even a mention of burn cream or 911. She’s a sadist, that one.
Deciding against setting my face on fire, I rearranged a few of those instructions and then spent some time with Jillian Michaels while everything cooked, after which I checked on everything and extended the cooking time. And then extended the cooking time again. It took about twice as long as the Pioneer Lady recommended, but who’s counting when it turns out beautifully?
After flan (and Jillian Michaels), Paella was a snap. Paella, like most good campesino food, is a collaborative effort of random ingredients and many people. I had a boyfriend once who asked me what food I liked to cook most and I said paella. I attribute that truth to the demise of our relationship because he preferred French and specialty and elegant but I like peasant food.
I love one-pot meals. I love recipes with a couple basic ingredients and a lot of leeway for whatever you have in the fridge or your garden. Paella is a classic this way. Do you have rice, tomatoes, onions, saffron and chicken stock? You’ve got paella.
Add meat. Or don’t. We added chorizo, crab and chicken. Add any vegetables you’ve got on hand. We put in asparagus, green beans and zucchini but you should eat whatever you like. This is the DIY choose-your-own-ending meal. Really. Just make sure you have a good wine to drink with it:
Some crusty bread:
And something sweet to finish everything off. The adults ate the pretty flan but the kids loved the gingerbread from 2 nights ago.
Go. Make Paella and flan and anything that makes you lick the plate.
That’s the spirit of Castilla La Mancha.
Science fiction fans own the month of May.
Between May the 4th, Space day, Twilight Zone day and Geek Pride Day today, they have just enough time in between to clean up the mess and air out their costumes before the next LAN party. Speaking of, I love that there’s a wikiHow site detailing how to throw a LAN party and recommending additional activities like power supply chuckin’ (pardon??) because “no one can sit at a computer for 24 hours straight (or at least they shouldn’t…)” Hilarious.
To that uninformed person, I say “I find your lack of faith disturbing…”
Please refer to article #2 of the Geek Pride Manifesto where geeks claim “The right to never leave the house” followed by article #4 “The right to associate with other nerds” and article #10 “The right to take over the world.” These facts add up to millions of geeks sitting at computers 24/7, all online with each other and all in separate houses except for this one proud day each year when they pry their cheeto dusted butts out of their ergonomically correct computer chairs, squeeze into their vintage Star Wars T-shirts purchased on ebay and put on their dress up specs (claiming article #8 “The right to be overweight and nearsighted” AND Article #7 “The right to be out of style”) to go meet their geeky friends at previously determined places where they can celebrate their geekiness by doing things together that they would normally do separately.
By Grabthar’s hammer, may they live long and prosper.
Why would geeks disrupt their routines on May 25? Many reasons, not the least of which is Article #9 “The right to show off their geekiness.” The first Star Wars movie opened today in 1977. Additionally, Douglas Adams fans celebrate “Towel Day” based on Adam’s assertion that if interstellar hitchhikers have a towel, they are prepared for anything. When Mr. Adams died, his fans chose this year to carry towels all day in his memory. There’s also a sector of Terry Pratchett fans who celebrate the Discworld revolution of the Glorious 25th of May in ways that involve lilacs, hard boiled eggs and revisionist history. And somehow Pac-Man got thrown into the mix when the first celebration in Spain involved a human Pac-Man game.
It’s all very complicated.
Point being: Geeks come out to play today (and perhaps only today) so I played with them because I’ll be a geek for hire where a holiday is concerned.
I started with the geek flag since there are lots of references to “letting it fly.” Still being in the literal frame of mind from yesterday and figuring Bethany’s house should be branded today, I made her a geek flag. You’re welcome, Sis!
Note the subject appropriate fabric:
And the use of the background towel and the robot hand so I could include almost every sector of geekdom:
The word you are looking for is “geektastic” or… disturbing. Whichever works.
Being on a roll, and having a cupcake agenda because I’ve got a party in June that needs cupcakes, I tested Ina Garten’s Coconut cupcake recipe. I made them exactly as written here and they’re fluffy and melty and delectable. As to the comment flame war about butter, I’m claiming Geek responsibility #3 “If there’s a discussion about something geeky, you must give your opinion” to say “Follow the recipe. Butter is good. Refer to Article #8.”
What to do with all these cupcakes? Make a Pac-Man game, of course!
It was difficult to arrange and photograph; but do or do not; there is no try. To do this well I would have needed more small ones, a larger board, more time and less of a life. Being only a geek du jour, I worked with what I had. The kids will decimate them tomorrow.
I hoped I could play actual Pac-Man but the Coconut Grove had gotten rid of their old arcade games. Boooo! So I didn’t practice my Wargame skillz of world domination but I did do karaoke. And by “doing” karaoke I mean I went, I supported, I applauded and I picked songs for other people. I was the karaoke pit crew. The venue was flush with the old and the tone deaf so I’m calling it a geek evening well spent.
And now you’ll excuse me, I have to shut down the garbage compactor on the detention level.
So long… thanks for all the fish
Everyone has an opinion about biscuits. Just as it seems everyone has a favorite restaurant/mom/grandma that makes the BEST biscuits in the world. Is this a subjective assessment? Can a search for the perfect food ever be objective?
If I didn’t have so many holidays to celebrate this month, I might devote the whole month to a search for the perfect biscuit. If you need someone for this kind of quest, I am your girl. 100%. I would try every biscuit in a 100 mile radius and bake every biscuit recipe I could find, far past the point that people are willing to eat them. I like to think of myself as thorough but others have used the word obsessive. Either way, my brother-in-law is not so silently thanking God that I don’t have a month to inundate them with biscuits and my sister keeps saying “I’m just trying to accept that I’ll gain weight this month.” Meanwhile, I have become a Jillian Michaels devotee; so, let’s see if shredding and running and yoga can keep pace with the baking.
Ok, back to task. Biscuits. It’s National Buttermilk Biscuit Day. Did I mention that? Probably not, because for a minute there I lost myself in the fantasy of having a legitimate reason to eat biscuits for a month. I remember reading about Julia Childs perfecting her mayonnaise recipe and throwing away gallons of mayonnaise as she made batch after batch, tweaking the ingredients and the technique. Her willingness to make things and NOT eat them is probably why she lived into her 90’s whereas in her place I’d die within a year of clogged arteries and an inability to get off my couch. I know this because I probably gained 5lb today and we only made 2 batches of biscuits.
My sister and I pitted the north against the south, testing baking powder biscuits against buttermilk biscuits. There are a zillion recipes and trying to pick the best one makes my head hurt. So, we started with a known quantity in our friend Sarah’s baking powder biscuit recipe because we’ve both made and eaten these biscuits on several occasions and they are spectacular. Sarah has a blog here and every recipe I’ve tried is excellent. Unlike me, Sarah has an ability to read a recipe and know whether it’s worth her time and then she adds and subtracts until it’s perfect.
My sister made Sarah’s biscuits as my niece looked on so I could watch her butter cutting technique. I usually use a pastry cutter but my sister uses her fingers:
Most important biscuit making tip: don’t over handle the dough. As my sister puts in, you can elevate a bad biscuit recipe with good handling and you can ruin a great recipe by over handling. I don’t use my fingers because I fear over handling but my sister is good at this. Her final product defines the word “flaky:”
Don’t you just want to slather butter on it and then chase it with about 6 more? Me too. We polished off the majority of that pan, the kids ate dinner and then I made the second batch of biscuits. You know, for science. No other reason. Not because they are delicious and we have a biscuit problem. Not that at all. Really.
The second recipe came from Southern Living Magazine, because it reminded me of my best friend’s grandma’s recipe, which is also spectacular. You can find the SL recipe here and 3 ingredients means it’s all about proportion and technique. Were I to make them again, I would use unsalted butter because my only complaint is that they are slightly salty. Otherwise, they’re fantastic:
You can tell that they aren’t as flaky. They have more chew to them and a crispy bottom, which makes them great under sausage gravy because they won’t get gummy like baking powder biscuits. We ate a bunch before dinner:
And then had some with dinner:
The accompanying Georgian pork stew can be found on Epicurious here. It’s incredible. Just don’t trim all the fat off the pork or it gets too dry. We made mashed potatoes but you could just have biscuits and stew and be happy.
In fact, you should. Go make the stew with Sarah’s biscuits for one group of friends and then have a whole different group over the next morning and make the Southern Living biscuits with sausage gravy. Overnight you’ll gain a reputation for biscuit excellence and there’s nothing better than feeding good food to people you love.
Seriously.
I’m not sure why you’re still reading this when you have a whole day to enjoy biscuits.
Call your friends and get started!
Happy National Biscuit Day!
I had no plans for this day. Does one even celebrate Friday the 13th ? Isn’t Friday the 13th something you normally try to ignore? I guess you can indulge with a slasher film but that seems so… redundant. However, I discovered that a sizeable enough number of people stay in bed to avoid all possible catastrophe on these days that sales go down by several hundreds of millions. Anything with that big an impact on the economy is a disorder so doctors put together every relevant foreign word they could think of and came up with:
friggatriskaidekaphobia
Got that? Now fear of Friday the 13th is a genuine disease.
I’m pretty sure I don’t have it because as superstitious as I can be about certain things, I’ve never cared one way or the other about numbers, cracked mirrors or hockey masks. But wanting to mark the moment in some way made me think of food and of course that led to baking and then a search for some kind gruesome looking components with a small side line search for someone to give the baked goods to since we just rid the house of cupcakes and still have some brownies hanging around.
Problem 1. What to make.
A very short internet search led me to some truly appalling foods. Vienna sausages shouldn’t “float” in anything, no one should spend any time peeling grapes and when you fill dates with cream cheese and chopped walnuts and call them “roasted cockroaches” I put my foot down. Disgusting. Clever but disgusting.
But pie is fun. Piecrust can be manipulated and fillings can be bloody red strawberries or cherries. We have a friend with a birthday on the 13th and another with a new baby so now we can make two pies and get rid of them, which solves problem 2. And if I make a Friday the 13th reference on the pie somehow, then I can take a picture and post it here and all problems are solved! Plus strawberries look really good right now.
This is how my sister and I ended up throwing a pie making party with some friends drinking gin and tonics, lending the occasional hand and contributing the sparkling social element. During the afternoon somehow the pies doubled themselves (4 pies?? What happened!?)
2 strawberry rhubarb, a cherry and a strawberry. So now we have two pies that will stay here (No! No! No!!), which negates solution 2.
My idea was to write “Friday” in the top of the cherry pie and “the 13th” in the top of the strawberry pie. Ham fisted? Perhaps. But challenging. I had visions of fruit juice gently bubbling out of the cunningly cut little letters, easily readable by all and giving everyone a little laugh.
Oh Kaitlyn. You’re hilarious.
Also, I do believe the phrase “how hard can it be?” crossed my mind, which just shows that I learned nothing from stroked out Darth Vader and his cadre of cupcake friends.
Nevertheless, I rolled up my sleeves and started sketching letters on piecrust. But just as I started to cut, my sister looked over my shoulder and said “You know you can’t do it that way.” She reminded me that the piecrust is rolled out on paper and needs to be flipped over onto the pie; so, either I cut the letters out while it’s on the pie (D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R) or I cut them out backwards so it reads forwards when it’s flipped. Backwards letters in a piece of piecrust. What could be easier?
Ergo and forthwith the successful first pie:
The second pie was less successful when I realized the 3 looked like… a 3. Surgery, patting, recutting, reconstituting and then we had:
Wait a minute… the 1 is… BACKWARDS!
!@)(*$@#Y!
Too late now. I’ll just pretend it’s the influence of my 6 year old niece and her creative writing.
I shoved everything in the oven and took it out nearly an hour later:
What. In. The. Hell. Happened. Here.
You’ll note that the Friday pie is neatly contained but I think the 13th pie went through battle in the oven while I wasn’t looking.
My sister looked at the steaming red pile, raised her (newly plucked) eyebrows and said “Well, it looks bloody. Isn’t that what you were going for?”
Truth.
Happy (?) Friday the 13th.
For most of the world, Buddha’s birthday was Tuesday. It’s a bit complicated because the math involves a Chinese lunar calendar and his birthday never falls on the same day of the year except in Japan where they celebrate it on April 8th .
Either way, I missed it.
But I like having people forget my birthday and remember it later. It’s fun to get late phone calls and late gifts and be having dinner a week later when someone says “Wasn’t it your birthday? This one is on me.” Makes the celebration last for days, sometimes weeks.
In that spirit, I’m celebrating Buddha today. Belatedly.
I asked my sister today what she would get someone who wanted nothing. She said “We talking about Buddha?” I said yes and she thought for a second before saying “Does he need a meditation pillow? Maybe a new sarong?” Then she said “Really, he’d want you to focus on your own life instead of on him.”
She’s a smart one.
There’s a legend that Buddha gave up austerity and ate a bowl of rice porridge to keep from harming his body through extreme deprivation. This revelation caused him to achieve another level of enlightenment so rice and milk are served at many of the Buddha birthday celebrations in Asian nations.
I can’t give Buddha a meditation pillow so I made brown basmati pudding with coconut milk and cardamom and ginger instead. I used a recipe from the Rebar Modern Food Cookbook, recipes from a restaurant in Canada. You can find the recipe on a blog here and don’t you know there’s someone who attempted cooking through the whole cookbook here, so you can find more recipes and commentary (the madness of Julie Powell lives on…)
This rice pudding is a slightly sweet aromatic comfort food, like breakfast or a mild dessert if you dressed it up with fruit or sugar. I figured Buddha would want his simple and plain, so that’s what I made for him.
Then I spent three hours focusing on myself in two consecutive yoga classes, one Hatha and one Yin. I had the same teacher for both classes and she said the same thing in both classes:
“When your body resists, listen. It usually means you’re holding onto something. Learn to say: I let go. I surrender.”
In the spirit of the Buddha, I listened and I said “I let go. I surrender.” I think I’ll have to let go and surrender again in the next class and the one after that and the one after that, but maybe eventually I’ll learn.
Life is a process. So is yoga. So is letting go.
Happy birthday, Buddha.
The Divinity in me bows to the Divinity in you.
Namaste.
When I think of butterscotch brownies, I picture dark chocolatey brownies with oozing rivulets of golden butterscotch running through their crackley satiny tops. Ooh. Just made my mouth water a little bit writing that sentence. It sounds illicit and illegal, not to mention wrong, to talk about food like that. Like food porn.
But that’s not my point. My point is that I picture chocolate when I picture brownies. However, a little looking around and I discovered that butterscotch brownies are also called blondies, which are like chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate. In a bar form. And I LOVE those. I LOVE them more than brownies, more than any form of chocolate because I’m just that kind of girl. This is a holiday I can celebrate with my whole heart and a whole plate of butterscotch brownies.
I used a Cook’s Illustrated recipe that you can find on a blog here but I added more… chocolate. Yeah, I put chocolate in them. It seemed like the thing to do. I love eating cookies without chocolate but making something called a butterscotch brownie without chocolate seemed weird. And not right. Of course, now it’s a chocolate chip cookie-ish situation with pieces of Heath bar since I threw those in too. But for the purposes of this holiday, it’s a butterscotch brownie.
Need another look? Of course.
Buttery crumbs dripping off your fingers, chocolate melting on your tongue. Decadent.
I didn’t eat the whole plate; so, if you come over, I’ll share a couple.
Have some chocolate. Have some butterscotch. Or put them both together because it’s a holiday!
Mostly, enjoy :)
Gypsy Queen 