Keeping warm in the kitchen

You may have heard: it's kinda cold out. Like schools-closed, work-canceled cold. Perfect for some baking.

The children (and the husband) all napped at the same time this afternoon, and I found some peace in the kitchen.



Sipping some warm cider while making bread dough, to the sound of nothing, was pretty much heaven.

Pumpkin muffins were also on the agenda, made with some homemade pumpkin puree.



I used a slightly different pumpkin-cooking method than in the past (this one). It was awesome--not at all watery, which is often an issue for me. I think the key is to roast it dry rather than steam it.

I had a helper for pumpkin prep yesterday. She's a pretty cool buddy to have.

Potato harvest

Well, it's not much, but it's better than last year's.

 

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I love Jeni's*

I am a fan of ice cream. If you know me in the real world or have been reading for a long time, this is no surprise to you.

And while I love many, many ice creams, I do have a very favorite: Jeni's Salty Caramel. I happened upon Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams while on a trip to Columbus and thought it was some pretty yummy stuff. Then I was able to find some pints locally. I tried a few flavors (all very, very good), eventually hitting upon the Salty Caramel flavor. And then I was in love. Seriously. I never branch out anymore. If I'm in the market for a fancy (pricey but worth it) pint of ice cream, it will be Jeni's Salty Caramel.

But that is not the end of the love story, my friends. Jeni's has a book! So the other day I got my hands on Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home and found that it included a recipe for the Salty Caramel ice cream! Yay! So many exclamation points!**

It was a bit more complicated and time consuming than my usual ice cream recipes, but it was manageable. And it is tasty. I'd say mine turned out not quite as good as the pints, but it was close. Definitely a decent substitute when buying $10 pints of ice cream doesn't seem like a good option. Although given my love of those pints, I probably consider it a good option way more than is reasonable.

So consider this my recommendation. For both the book and the store-bought ice cream. Find it.*** Eat it. Thank me.

*This is not a sponsored post or anything. Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams does not know I exist. I love them anyway. And I think my real-life people (like my co-workers) are tired of hearing me evangelize about an ice cream brand.

**In looking up links for this post, I discovered that the recipe is also available online here.

***There is a Jeni's coming to Chicago! To my old neighborhood! I cannot wait to make a field trip.

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Ready

I like living in a place with "seasons." But I also like for those seasons to know their place. I mean, really. It is the last week in March. It is spring now, so let's make that happen. Please?

We are all ready to get outside. Without taking twenty minutes to bundle up. Alas, this morning there was fresh snow on the ground.

But we've started some seeds, and that helps alleviate the itch a little bit. Too cold for the yard or even the garage, we spread out some plastic on the kitchen floor last week and got to work. Adelaide was happy to help, proudly wielding her very own shovel and only eating a couple of the seeds (!) before getting the "it's not yummy food yet" lecture.

And now we excitedly check on our little seedlings each day, waiting patiently (well, as patiently as we are able) for the gardening season to start in earnest.

 

 

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Pumpkin pie, take two

This is my second attempt to write about my kitchen adventures from this past Monday. I scrapped the first attempt because, to be honest, it got a bit whiny.

See, I had taken the day off after a weekend out of town, and I had plans. Plans that included baking bread, making granola, and getting some other kinda-fun-kinda-necessary cooking tasks off the to-do list on the chalkboard.

But instead it ended up being a day of mishaps and trying to roll with it. Flexibility is not always (ever?) my strong suit, and neither is accepting my own boneheaded mistakes, so the day was a bit of a challenge.

It all started when I happened to notice that one of our pumpkins, happily stored in the pantry since our fall harvest, was suddenly looking a bit squishy. Wanting to save as much of it as possible from a compost-bin fate, I decided that immediate pumpkin surgery was necessary. I cut it up and put it on the stove to cook. Adelaide helped me pick out the seeds that were still edible (we roasted them using this method). And then I had a couple cups of pureed pumpkin sitting around, so, naturally, pie!

Let's just say, it was not my best work. I won't go into all the details, but in a seriously "duh" moment I baked the pie crust without weighting it, and it shrank down to a flat disc on the bottom of the pie pan. No side crusts. Not even full coverage of the bottom of the pie pan.

There were other "disasters" that day, both related to the pie and not.* And when all was said and done, I'd accomplished zero of the tasks on my original to-do list. I was disappointed. And I felt (and wrote) whiny about it.

BUT...



Looking at the ill-tempered novel I initially wrote about the day made me stop, shake my head, and get a grip. Day spent in the kitchen with my adorable little helper (who was soooo proud of herself for helping with the pumpkin seeds and the leftover pie crust)? Check. Rotting pumpkin salvaged? Check. Totally edible if somewhat ridiculous-looking pie** for dessert? Check. Time to get to the rest of it (or not...it's not like you don't live blocks from a grocery store, Sarah) another day?  CHECK.

*Highlights include: The filling for the pie was too loose, probably because I didn't bother to drain off enough liquid from the homemade pumpkin puree. I burned the tomato sauce for dinner. Oh, and I managed to burn a hot dog bun to death in the microwave.

**As always, I used the Deluxe Butter Crust recipe from The Joy of Cooking. And I used the pumpkin pie filling recipe in that book too. It's the second time, and the first time the filling turned out great. This time, it tasted great but was a mess, but I don't blame the recipe.

A little helper

Adelaide loves to help. Ask her to do something? No, no, no way, no. But ask her to help by doing something? Yes! And if you're engaged in a task, be prepared, because what grown-up task couldn't be made even better with some toddler help?

helping mama make cheesecake bars one morning

Of course her desire to help is a wonderful thing, so we try to encourage it as much as possible, even when her help is, um, a little bit less than helpful. Letting her splash away on one side of the sink while I do dishes on the other side? Well worth the water mess. Taking five times as long to load laundry into the dryer because she wants to put it in herself piece by piece? Not a bad price to pay for a buddy who wants to help do laundry. The same goes for her "folding" of the laundry.

helping dada stir the hot cocoa

And maybe the biggest upside to her love of helping? Distraction. One afternoon this weekend, while Adam was away, I felt a meltdown coming on. Well, make that two meltdowns...one for the toddler and one for the mama. The obvious solution? Cookies. Yes, there was lots of "have? help? more?" (Adelaide) and "wait! stop! not in there!" (me). Yes, there was flour everywhere (but, hey, Adelaide helped clean it up after and did a pretty darn good job too!). Yes, it took a bit longer than usual. But boy was it fun! And she was very proud of herself. And I got cookies.

The cookies were these brown sugar cookies from Joy the Baker. Yummy and soft and chewy. They were a hit with the whole family. The only thing I'd do differently next time is to use less ginger. They were good, but the first couple of days they seemed a bit more ginger-spicey than I think is ideal.

 

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Favorite apple pie

Stop the presses: I have a new favorite apple pie. Adam says he still prefers my old standby, but this Breton Apple Pie has won my heart.

I cooked and then froze the filling in the fall, after our apple picking weekend. I'd never frozen apple pie filling before, but it worked like a charm. The awesome thing about this pie is the crust. It's kind of like a sugar cookie, but better, and with apple pie filling sandwiched inside. So, you know, amazing.

 

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More apples

After using about 40 pounds of the apples for the applesauce adventure, I was left with about 10 pounds for non-sauce purposes. Non-sauce purposes = pie.



A few pounds were immediately turned into this pie. It was tasty, but tasty just like my usual apple pie. The extra step of a sugary-buttery layer under the bottom crust didn't seem to add much. Well, except extra tricky stuck-to-the-pan issues while serving. In my estimation, a nice idea, but not really worth it. Maybe drizzling some sort of caramel sauce over the top of an everyday apple pie would work? Hmmm.



The remaining apples were peeled, cored, sliced, and cooked for a little bit with some cinnamon and sugar, and they are now waiting patiently (I assume) in the freezer to become pies sometime later this fall/winter.

Can it

Holy crap, you guys, I canned applesauce! This is, as far as I am concerned, the kind of thing that should be breathlessly exclaimed to anyone who might be willing to listen to me speak for more than a couple of seconds. Because, and maybe you missed this the first time, I CANNED APPLESAUCE! Now that I've internet-yelled it at you, I'm sure you understand the majorness of the situation.



Seriously, though, I am pretty excited about this, as it is my first foray into the world of canning.* It made me feel all self sufficient, which is, of course, awesome. I have yet to put the jars away on the pantry shelves because looking at them reminds me that I am now a canning rockstar finally got up the courage to try this thing I've been wanting to try for ages. And that it (so far...I think...we haven't eaten it yet...) worked out pretty well.



It was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. Easier because it is actually fairly uncomplicated...just heating and boiling and such. Harder because it took forever for anything to boil, putting things into and out of big pots of boiling water is kinda scary, and I'm still a little bit (irrationally) afraid that I'll botulize** my family.



I used about 40 pounds of apples, canned 7 quarts of sauce and froze the rest (about another 6 quarts, I'd say, but the containers are of varying sizes so it's hard to be precise). Not exactly enough to satisfy our applesauce needs for the year--Adelaide loves her some applesauce--but it still feels like quite the accomplishment!




*Well, aside from "helping" my dad can stuff from our garden. I remember very little other than that canning pickles made the house hot and smelly like vinegar.

**Totally a word. Not at all made up. Also, I followed all the instructions and know that everything should be fine, so I'm not AFRAID afraid, but I am a worrier and can't quite shake it completely. You know how it goes.

The best kind of apples

I must admit, I was getting a bit down about the apple situation this year. Due to the early warm-up in March followed by the return to colder temps in April, there were a lot of fruit tree crop failures around here. I had been hunting for someplace to go apple picking for a reasonable price, or even someplace to pick up a bunch of well-priced "seconds," but I was coming up empty.

So imagine my delight when we arrived downstate for a family visit last weekend and the in-laws mentioned that their backyard apple tree is full of apples this year...and that we were welcome to all the apples we could pick!



We picked about 50 pounds, most of which will become applesauce. Ask me how excited I am. (Hint: So freakin' excited!)



I have no idea what breed of apples these are, but I know from a few years ago that they are perfect for applesauce and make a decent pie, too. And I know that they were free, fun to pick, and a nice surprise, all of which make them pretty darn great.



Adelaide was kind of hilarious about the squishy dropped apples that were on the ground. When she'd come across one, she'd stop, point, and kind of freak out. File "It's just a squished apple, it's okay" under sentences I didn't think I'd ever have to repeat fifty times in one day.



So, applesauce: freeze it or can it? In the past I've only frozen it because my batches have been really small. This seems like it might be a canning-worthy batch, though. I don't know if I have the freezer space for this kind of haul. But, on the other hand, I am a little afraid of canning. It just seems complicated. On the other other hand, I want to learn to can sooner or later, so maybe I should just jump in. Either way, I suppose I'd better figure something out soon, because there are a lot of apples in the basement and possibly more on the way!

Highs and lows (and tomatoes)

The garden this year had it's ups and downs.

The bad: The corn was ravaged by squirrels. The cucumbers gave us a couple of good weeks of production before dying a mysterious death. Rabbits (we think) ate the broccoli, though it may still give us a little something. And the wildlife ate 5 of our 10 tomato plants at the seedling stage. I still don't seem able to grow onions. The potatoes were almost a total bust (worse than last year, even). And the carrots are strangely stunted and have bad spots (huh? this has never happened to us before).

The good: Beans! The green beans were awesome again. The black beans rock my world. Fresh lettuce from the garden is the best thing ever. The basil went bonkers. We have four good-sized pumpkins growing! And we're getting a pretty decent crop of tomatoes from our surviving plants.



To hold on to some of the tomatoey goodness, I oven roasted them and put them away in the freezer to use for pasta sauce some dreary winter day. I used the method in The Homemade Pantry. It was easy and smelled good, but I won't be able to report on the tasty (I hope!) results for a few months.



Remarkably, even though the "bad" list looks longer than the "good" list, it still feels like victory. We grew some food; we got to eat it; it was yummy. I mean, can you honestly look at those roasted tomatoes and tell me it's not a win?

Beans, beans...

I know I have gone on about this at length before but I'm going to just go ahead and say it again: Gardening! It is so cool!



These are some midnight black turtle beans that we grew this year.*

I cannot get over it. I am, perhaps, a bit overly excited. Because we grew black beans! The kind that sit all dry in a jar on the pantry shelf waiting to be cooked for chili! It is amazing! (Perhaps I should rein in the enthusiasm just a little bit so I don't scare you away?)

I don't know why the possibility of growing dried beans seemed to surprise me so. I suppose I had just never really thought about it, about what it took to get them to my kitchen. But I was flipping through the seed catalogs this past winter and saw seeds for a few sorts of meant-to-be-dried beans, and of course you can grow them at home. Why not? And it turns out to be rather simple. Plant, tend (my "tending" is very minimal indeed, more like "ignore") and grow just like the green beans, but don't harvest the beans so soon. Let them turn a funny shade of blackish-purple. Continue to leave them alone. Then let them dry and turn a light, papery brown. You can pluck the pods a basketful at a time as they dry, or you can pull the plants up and hang them upside down for awhile to make sure the pods are all as dry as can be.



Chili season just got about a million times more exciting around here.

*This isn't the whole harvest; there are more beans waiting for me. These are just the first ones we've shelled. A cool Sunday afternoon was spent sitting on the patio by a fire, shelling beans, chatting and sipping wine while the kiddo took an extra-long nap (inside but within earshot). Not a bad way to spend a lazy afternoon, I think!

Pesto!

Okay...I thought I had published this post, oh, two weeks ago or so. But I logged on today to finally post again and saw this still sitting here as a draft. But it also says published 7/28. But it didn't show up on the homepage when I checked. But somehow I had already linked to it on flickr. Huh. So, possibly delayed, possibly not, here's some pesto.

Our basil is going bonkers this year, which is awesome. I am making pesto.



Basil-Walnut Pesto

Ingredients

2 ounces parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup walnuts
2 large garlic cloves
2 cups basil leaves
1/2-3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste

Directions

I make this in a small Cuisinart processor, so these directions are for that. But if you're not using such a thing, just chop and mix and stir. Start with the grated cheese and the walnuts in the processor and grind until well chopped/combined. Add basil, garlic, oil, salt and pepper. Alternate between the grind and slice buttons a few seconds at a time until the  mixture comes together.

Oatmeal Creme Pies

I used to LOVE the Little Debbie oatmeal creme pies as a kid. I haven't had one for ages. But the other day on Pinterest I came across this recipe for a homemade version and absolutely had to try it out.

I could tell they were going to be good because the dough was amazingly delicious. Like the I wanted to eat the whole bowl raw kind of delicious. But I did not eat the whole bowl raw, which was for the best I suppose, and certainly worked out well for Adam because I am a nice wife and shared my cookies instead of eating them all myself. Aren't I great?



So, the cookies, they were good. And even though I had my doubts about a food item containing marshmallow creme*, the filling was good too, though maybe just a touch too sweet for me.  I thought about making my own marshmallow creme (using this recipe), but in the end I went the easy route and bought some. Probably for the best since my candy thermometer and I don't get along very well. Oh, and I used old fashioned rolled oats instead of the quick oats called for, which worked out fine.




Adam and I agreed that the cookies were even better after a couple of days, which is always a bonus.


*I do not like marshmallows. Not at all, never have. But it is mostly a texture thing, so I decided maybe I could handle marshmallow creme. I was not a fan of the little taste I had of the marshmallow creme plain, but all mixed up with the shortening and sugar and whatnot, it was fine.

Out in it

Every year I am reminded that growing food is an amazing thing. To put seeds into the bare ground and be rewarded with the makings of meal -- I will never cease to be awed by it, at least I hope that is the case.



This year we expanded the garden and added some new things, once again just trying to figure it all out as we roll along.




This year we also have a sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes clingy little helper, of course, which is a lot of fun (though it does tend to slow things down a bit!). This girl just adores being outside. Always. She doesn't always want to do anything out here -- sometimes she just wants to stand in the yard and be held -- but she's always itching to get out here just the same. Which, of course, I love. And I hope her enjoyment of the outdoors sticks with her as she grows. I want her to love and respect nature. I want her to continue to wonder at the birds and the plants. I want her to grow up knowing good, healthy food and valuing the work it takes to get it to the table.



She's enjoying this little pail and tool set from Green Toys (and I'm enjoying that it's BPA-, pthlate-, and PVC-free and made in the USA from recycled plastic!). Digging in the garden soil myself while she digs happily in the soil nearby, having her look up from time to time to offer me a precious chunk of earth, is one of the times I feel like maybe we're getting things right.

Trial and error

I bought won-ton wrappers at the grocery store to use for dinner the other night.



Conclusion: I have no idea how to wrap up a won-ton wrapper.

But Adam said he liked the meal and would eat it again, so that's a win.

Strawberries

We went strawberry picking.

She settled in pretty quickly, pulling the tiniest berries, ripe or not. And stuffing at least a couple in her mouth, green parts and all, while mama and dada weren't looking. She'd been anti-strawberry at home previously, but being out in the field made them new and interesting.



At home, she splashed around on the patio while I washed and hulled in a homemade dress and apron in the sunshine. Every now and then she'd come over to sit in my lap for a snuggle, but after a minute or two she'd want back down for more water play. It was the best morning ever.



She "helped" me make strawberry pie, playing with the measuring cups and a few strawberries set aside just for her. She hadn't wanted to eat any of the strawberries in the days since she ate them in the field, but stirring and squishing them around was good fun. I glanced over to see if the oven was hot yet and when I turned my head back to her, she had stuffed those berries into her mouth. She gobbled up some more as fast as I'd let her have them. Her sticky smile was amazing.



A good reminder that she'll do things her own way and in her own time, and that plenty of time playing and exploring and making a mess is the best way to help her get where she's going.

Pita pizzas

Adam does not really cook. And by "Adam does not really cook," I mean "Adam really, really does not cook." But every now and then, he has a sudden inspiration regarding food that works out wonderfully for me. Because I like things that are delicious.

Last week, we made pita pizzas. Very easy. Very delicious.



Just take some pitas. Ours were from Whole Foods because I didn't feel like making any from scratch. Brush them with olive oil. Then add a little shredded mozzarella, if you want. Or not. Top them with yummy things like tomatoes, spinach, arugula, sauteed cucumbers*, and artichoke hearts. Then top with plenty of feta. Broil on low until the cheese gets a little melty and/or the pita edges start to get a little brown. Devour.



*Cucumbers chopped small and sauteed in olive oil with a little salt and pepper = soooo good. Just a heaping helping of that over pasta with a little feta and some halved cherry tomatoes? An insanely easy and great dinner.

One year

Adelaide turned one last Wednesday, and on Saturday we had a little party for her with the extended family.

It's hard to believe that a year has passed since we first met this wonderful little person, but every day she is less "baby" more "toddler," so I guess it must be true. And even though it's hard to believe a whole year has passed, sometimes it's also hard to believe that it was only a year ago that she was a tiny sleepy/fussy little baby burrito bundle instead of the wiggly, giggly kid she is today.



It would be difficult to overstate how much she loved her birthday cake and ice cream (in that, at least, she is her mama's kid for sure). I tried out this chocolate cake recipe, and I've decided it has a slight edge over the Hershey's recipe I'd been using. So for her party I made the new chocolate cake again, but I made it as cupcakes (just reduce the baking time to 20-25 minutes). And I iced them with this icing, but I added about 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. Verdict: Yum!





Side note: I ordered cute cupcake papers and was disappointed to realize that, with chocolate cake anyway, it was almost a total waste.



Also: I also need to tell you about the gift I made, but that's its own post. Soon!