My goodness, is it summer? How did that happen?
No, honestly, out here on the edge of the world, we don't get summer/spring so much we get 10C and less rain.
Now, I know its been a while since I've talked about my kitchen exploding or stealing expensive desserts through wormholes, but the truth of the matter is, I've gotten better at cooking. My roasts have been succulent, my potatoes, buttery and mashed and my cream puffs! I was beginning to think that I was getting good at this kitchen/hausfrau thing.
But I digress.
Yesterday was gorgeous. So gorgeous that I managed to wear a sundress without getting frostbite! So gorgeous that we broke out the BBQ. So gorgeous that I simply HAD to make a wine and vegetable run. Now, my initial plan was to make ratatouille. For those of you who've followed my exploits in the past, you will know that ratatouille and I have had... let's call it: issues. However, what I have not reported on is many ratatouille successes SINCE that day with the cucumber.
Unfortunately the grocery store was out to get me. After hunting in the produce section for the better part of ten minutes, I discovered that there were no zucchinis to be had! They'd simply never been shipped.
Well, as we all know, a ratatouille isn't ratatouille without zucchini. I learned this hard way in the past. I wasn't going to go through the trauma again. So, instead, I turned my attention to the avocado sale. Happy little pear shape vegetables just waiting to be scooped up.
I was inspired! Yes, I could picture it clearly! I would make guacamole to go with dinner. Throw in some salsa, chips, summer sunshine - what more could a girl ask for? What did it matter that I'd never made guacamole before? I was getting good at this cooking stuff, remember? How hard could it be?
Ingredients
avocados (grab some! they're on sale!)
olive oil
onion (if you can find one)
salsa
lemon juic
Method (to the madness)
Put it all in a bowl and mash it. Tada!
Indeed, so confident was I in my guacamole-making skills that I helped myself to a celebratory glass of wine (*cough* or 3 *cough*). What? I gave my fiancé a glass. He was still outside working on the BBQ. Meanwhile, I was busy trying to chop an onion that didn't exist.
You know that feeling in the grocery store when you look at an ingredient and wonder: "do I have any of that left at home?" and then you buy it just to be on the safe side, get home and discover you now have two or twenty or five of whatever that ingredient was that you weren't sure about? Yeah, that never happens with me. I blissfully walk about thinking there's imaginary food in my house. I seem to be under the impression that if something was in my house once, it left a clone.
So, sufficed to say that when I passed the onions in the grocery store, it never dawned on me that I could possibly be OUT of onions, because to my way of thinking they're busy forming a small fiddle playing village in my pantry.
I was mistaken.
But who really needs onion in guacamole anyway? Just takes away from the delicious avocado! I don't need an onion. No siree! No onions in this dip!
Then my fiancé walked in (smelling of delicious BBQ), asked why I wasn't adding an onion and produced one out of thin air (aka the back of the fridge). I was so set on my onion-less guac by then that I refused to take it from him and just got to work opening my avocados - and can I just say, avocado may be the most pleasurable vegetable to prep. It doesn't give you sass, just creamy goodness complete with an enormous pit that I sorely wished I had a violent Philistine to launch it at alla David and Goliath.
Yet, no sooner was I singing the praises of my avocados than I found a unripe rebel in my midst. It wasn't smooth and effortless. It was tough and thick - holding my knife in its clutches and laughing maniacally! A more sane woman than I would have admitted defeat and left the little bastard to ripen. But there was wine in me and I found myself believing in avocado unity. "They're trying to segregate!" I cried, in great distress, to my fiancé.
"They're what?" asked my confused fiancé who was still holding the onion that I'd refused to take from him.
"Its a self-hating avocado! It won't join the others!"
"I'll put it on the grill." (You see my man and I have agreed that with cooking, when in doubt, add fire.... it worked with the rum balls!)
Perfect, the rebellion would be burned and the fascist onion would be grilled to a crisp along with it. With those problems out of the way I could finally finish mashing up my ingredients. If only my man-friend would've gone out to the grill and been done with. But no... for some reason he stood there, avocado in one hand, onion in the other, brows furrowed, watching my guacamole mashing technique.
Its mashing. It's not exactly an art. And still he stared at me.
"You're doing it wrong."
"Back seat cook."
"No, let me. Grind AND twist. You're just mashing it."
Dear readers, he tried to take the masher from me and 'show me how to mash correctly'. That's like telling someone there's a universally accepted method to clubbing someone on the head, or beating two rocks together. Its a metal masher that mashes soft vegetables. It mashes. There REALLY isn't much more to it.
"Back to your fire, caveman!" I may have even pointed to the door with the masher still in hand. Hard to say... an empty glass wine was in the other hand... that is also the reason I may be imagining what he said next:
"Pound and twist work better. Woman do it wrong!" I may have hallucinated the leopard skin toga, but...
Aha.
I'd found my Philistine.
Note of Interest: avocado pits sound hollow, like coconuts, when they hit something solid.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Butter!
Hello blog-o-sphere!
I know that I have been absent for sometime. This is largely to do with my courses starting up again, and my sudden lack of time… also I have been chained to a library table, where I'm continually assaulted by my course-required readings.
Oh, the paper-cuts.
But, there is a light at the end of this tunnel - my birthday! Yes, this coming weekend I will be a whole year older and that calls for cookies, cookies and more cookies!! So, I hunted online and through all my cookbooks, and finally settled on a recipe I have all the ingredients for: chocolate chip cookies.
First: a rant about hunting for recipes. Did you know that almost every person on the planet who bakes has a kitchen-aid? I didn’t. I think hand-held eggbeaters are advanced baking tech. Kitchen-aids are a strange beast from Star Trek. I half expect a personal Data-butler to come with them (some assembly required). He’ll read the manual to you and make helpful suggestions about cooking… and maybe feed the cat (I mean if he’s you personal android butler, he might as well make himself useful. I won’t work him all day or anything. We’d chill and watch a movie later.)
However, everyone with an oven apparently has one of these magical Star Trek devices, and allrecipe.com was intent on telling me what order to add my ingredients into my mixer, or what paddle setting will most helpful.
Paddles? It’s called a spoon, people!! I mean, where is the fun in baking if the blender does it for you? The whole reason I bake is because I’m usually pissed about something. Don’t pretend I’m the only one! Who hasn’t made the perfect brownies (because they were able to beat in extra air) after a bad break up? My poor bread dough has to endure my verbal abuses about, the Edge-of-the-World bus system and how many readings I have to do this week (which apparently I’m avoiding if I’m busy beating the crap out of bread dough).
All I’m saying folks, is skip the SciFi channel baking and work out some of that aggression!
But I digress.
Round 1!
So, the first recipe I tried was angry, with little flour and lots of baking soda. It created cookies that look like teeny-tiny Frisbees with shrapnel.
NO.
Round 2!
Round 2 promised me the chewiest chocolate chip cookies of my life. There was a sneaky extra egg yolk to create a stronger bonding agent without the leavening. This recipe had it all!
Unfortunately, what it did not have, was my full attention.
I’m literate. I’ve just announced to the internet that I’m imprisoned in library most of my days… which may have certain legal implications that I’ve over-looked. But the point is, I’m literate. So why, oh why, didn’t I read the measurements before I started baking?
You see what I have in front of me at the moment is bowl FULL of dough. I mean that I can’t add another ingredient here or it will all spill over!
It started with the butter. I was so excited to actually have a giant cube of butter in fridge, as it is a grocery luxury at the moment. And so, due to my excitement, I added the entire cube, clearly thinking mmmmm, butter!! Butter makes everything amazing! MORE BUTTER!!!.
I added 1.5 cups of butter.
… what I needed to add was somewhere closer to ½ cup of butter.
Well that’s simple enough – just double/triple the recipe. Right?
Right. That’s exactly what I did.
Yeah, I’m sure you’re all expecting me to type that the cookies mutated into wild animals or the man from Monte Carlo tracked me down and stole my oven or something, but honestly this time my exploits aren’t nearly so dramatic.
My house will be FULL of cookies. That’s pretty crazy. And I will have to share said cookies with random people on the street or else risk obesity and diabetes. I’m sort of hoping the man from Monte Carlo DOES drop by. I’ll send him home with a tin of chocolate chip cookies. And then I’ll ask him to send his friends over so they can have some too.
Happy Birthday to me?
Friday, January 6, 2012
Sour Cream
Alright, sorry about the wait folks, but here we go - The Scribblers' December Baking Updates!
Yes, I know that it is officially January - the month when our guilt complexes take hold and we suddenly find herbal tea a delightful alternative to wine, bottled/tap water a nutritious substitute for coffee and we stock up on those 100 calorie snack packs (or whatever) in the hopes of changing our hedonist ways (fat chance January... just wait until Valentine's chocolates). But instead of staring forlornly at another high fiber, low sodium, low sugar, low fat and no fun oat crunchy, why don't we all take a ride down memory lane?
Yes, that's right folks, hop in that imagination sport's car and travel with me to: December
*insert flash back music here*
The snow is gently falling, quilting our world outside the window in the soft silence of winter. There is a snap of cold in the air, but inside the oven is toasty. Our hands are warmed with mugs of alcoholized hot chocolate (don't pretend you've never added a drop of Baileys) and the smell of cookies fills the kitchen.
Okay... to be honest, out here are the edge of the universe we got rain instead of snow, but the image stands the test of time.
So, this December, my brother, sister-in-law and adorable nephew traveled the vast expanses of Canada to find my manfriend and me! And (of course) a reward of baking was in order (as well as the earlier mentioned hot chocolate-plus).
Now, I'm pretty sure that one of my first edge-of-the-universe posts was all about making flawless sugar cookies in my new kitchen.
They turned out like this,
But I had family over! This wasn't a time to rest on my laurels. This was a time to turn to the masters and listen to Anna Olson tell me how to do it right. This was a time to blindly follow the recipes of Martha, of Delia Smith, of Betty Crocker - and yes, this is all code for: I went to foodnetwork.ca. But do you know what I found? I found tried tested and true testaments of anonymous foodnetwork addicts praising the glory of Sour Cream.
Saints and Bodhisattva our cookie prayers have been answered, they all seemed to say.
Moist and delicious sugar cookies like you wouldn't believe, they testified.
I was converted. If it was good enough for 'SugarMama73_8' then it was good enough for me.
Look at the picture of last time's cookies.
Remember that image... because here's how the Sour-Cream-Sugar-Cookies turned out. Yes, here is how my guest-welcoming, thank-you-so-much-for-coming-to-see-us, happy holidays sugar cookies turned out....
Its 'The Blob' in cookie form.
What went wrong? Was it the presence of my precious 8 month old nephew? Did he distract me into pouring flour on the floor when it should have gone in the bowl? Was it the sprinkles? Did the confetti of colour and sugar make the batter sad and deflated? Why were my cookies determined to have some sort of migratory/huddling-for-warmth interaction (because that is not where they STARTED on the pan)?
It couldn't be... no...
.... but the hymns of the believers....
...the testments and pictures of flawless cookies...
...NO...
It was...
...no I can't even say it...
...
...
It was the effing sour cream.
Two hours into my conversion I was having a crisis of faith. And so, never again will I try bring sour cream into the baking folds (unless its a sub for another ingredient in cake). No. Sour Cream, you are forever destined to stay in dips and as a topping to latkes.
You hurt me too deeply.
So, in conclusion, New Year's Resolution: do not get sucked in by foodnetwork gospel... they just want you to fail.
Yes, I know that it is officially January - the month when our guilt complexes take hold and we suddenly find herbal tea a delightful alternative to wine, bottled/tap water a nutritious substitute for coffee and we stock up on those 100 calorie snack packs (or whatever) in the hopes of changing our hedonist ways (fat chance January... just wait until Valentine's chocolates). But instead of staring forlornly at another high fiber, low sodium, low sugar, low fat and no fun oat crunchy, why don't we all take a ride down memory lane?
Yes, that's right folks, hop in that imagination sport's car and travel with me to: December
*insert flash back music here*
The snow is gently falling, quilting our world outside the window in the soft silence of winter. There is a snap of cold in the air, but inside the oven is toasty. Our hands are warmed with mugs of alcoholized hot chocolate (don't pretend you've never added a drop of Baileys) and the smell of cookies fills the kitchen.
Okay... to be honest, out here are the edge of the universe we got rain instead of snow, but the image stands the test of time.
So, this December, my brother, sister-in-law and adorable nephew traveled the vast expanses of Canada to find my manfriend and me! And (of course) a reward of baking was in order (as well as the earlier mentioned hot chocolate-plus).
Now, I'm pretty sure that one of my first edge-of-the-universe posts was all about making flawless sugar cookies in my new kitchen.
They turned out like this,
But I had family over! This wasn't a time to rest on my laurels. This was a time to turn to the masters and listen to Anna Olson tell me how to do it right. This was a time to blindly follow the recipes of Martha, of Delia Smith, of Betty Crocker - and yes, this is all code for: I went to foodnetwork.ca. But do you know what I found? I found tried tested and true testaments of anonymous foodnetwork addicts praising the glory of Sour Cream.
Saints and Bodhisattva our cookie prayers have been answered, they all seemed to say.
Moist and delicious sugar cookies like you wouldn't believe, they testified.
I was converted. If it was good enough for 'SugarMama73_8' then it was good enough for me.
Look at the picture of last time's cookies.
Remember that image... because here's how the Sour-Cream-Sugar-Cookies turned out. Yes, here is how my guest-welcoming, thank-you-so-much-for-coming-to-see-us, happy holidays sugar cookies turned out....
Its 'The Blob' in cookie form.
What went wrong? Was it the presence of my precious 8 month old nephew? Did he distract me into pouring flour on the floor when it should have gone in the bowl? Was it the sprinkles? Did the confetti of colour and sugar make the batter sad and deflated? Why were my cookies determined to have some sort of migratory/huddling-for-warmth interaction (because that is not where they STARTED on the pan)?
It couldn't be... no...
.... but the hymns of the believers....
...the testments and pictures of flawless cookies...
...NO...
It was...
...no I can't even say it...
...
...
It was the effing sour cream.
Two hours into my conversion I was having a crisis of faith. And so, never again will I try bring sour cream into the baking folds (unless its a sub for another ingredient in cake). No. Sour Cream, you are forever destined to stay in dips and as a topping to latkes.
You hurt me too deeply.
So, in conclusion, New Year's Resolution: do not get sucked in by foodnetwork gospel... they just want you to fail.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Rum Crispie Squares?
Um...
So I tried to make rum balls. I say 'try' because the end result was most certainly NOT anything remotely resembling a ball of truffly, chocolaty, rummy deliciousness. Instead, well...
You know what? Let me go back to the beginning.
Fresh off the high of making gorgeous bread in my previous post (and yes, despite the wait time, the puffing and the sticky dough, I fully intend to experiment with bread again) I thought: Wow, I should make rum balls! Okay, truth be told I've wanted to make rum balls since my last day of classes when a classmate brought in homemade rum balls and handed out the ridiculously easy looking recipe (<--baking gods - they're just waiting for me to say it!). I all but ran to the nearest grocery store and bought:
Ingredients!
one cancondensed evaporated milk (I'll explain that in a minute)
one bag of chocolate chips
rum
vanilla
Tada!
You mix'em all together. That's it! You chill them and then you roll them into rum ball loveliness complete with powdered sugar or sprinkles! It just sounds perfect, doesn't it? Who could possibly mess this up?
Well, I think it goes back to that condensed VS evaporated milk thing. You see, I've always thought that they were the same thing (And you know what? I can hear all you kitchen-savy folk shaking your head and face-palming at me). Well, I quickly learned that - guess what - they're not the same thing. Condensed milk is more like sugary milk syrup that can thicken and bind to other ingredients like chocolate chips, vanilla and rum.
Evaporated milk on the other hand... isn't... and doesn't.
Thus after putting all my ingredients in the bowl I found myself staring at, what can only be described as, chocolate-rum milk - a very expensive drink to enjoy with your pb&j.
I swore.
I've been told by a baker that you're never supposed to swear or get angry around chocolate but I did it anyway and I think the chocolate heard me, because it was resolute about not thickening. So I grabbed my laptop and fought through the jungle of recipe websites out there to find hints on how to thicken up my rum ball hopefuls. I wasn't giving up without a fight.
I won't bore you with the details, sufficed to say that over the next hour I added: powdered sugar, flour, crumbled up crackers and (oh get ready for it - this was an act of desperation) Rice Crispies. Even as I was tossing them into the bowl voices in my head were shouting out:
What are you doing?
NO!
Egads girl, you've ruined it!
This will never work....
And the voices were right.
I swore again and decided that these were not going to turn into rum balls without help, so I shoved them into the fridge behind the cucumber (yes THAT cucumber) and hoped my bowl of chocolate soup would magically transform. Then I went and read a book.
No, I'm not kidding. I hid my problem and ran away from it. What? You've never acted like a five year old?
Okay, in all fairness I knew I was going to have to deal with my chocolate soup eventually, but that eventually would include a man-friend with new ideas on how to fix the problem and perhaps even a: "Oh that's happened to me before! Here's what we have to do!"
Man-friend came home. You know what the man-friend did when I showed him the chocolate soup/rum-balls-that-weren't? He rolled up his sleeves, assessed the situation from all angles, took a sip of beer and the took the bowl out of the fridge. Then he PUT IT IN THE FREEZER! He was as clueless as I was!
Well at that point I was done with the idea of rum balls, cracked an egg into that soup and tossed it in the oven. That's right folks, when in doubt set it on fire. Foolproof.
And you know what happened? Man-friend and I actually stared in shock at what we'd created, because it made absolutely no sense. Souffle. My rum balls turned into a souffle! The whole mix puffed up and the Rice Crispies crackled and stiffened into a hard shell on the top, and underneath that hard shell was warm smooth souffle. It was delicious!
Somehow my oven opened a portal into a 5-star restaurant's kitchen (I'm guessing somewhere in Monte Carlo) and pulled the old switch-a-roo. While my man-friend and I were able to enjoy a delicious $90.00 souffle baked in Monaco, some poor man fresh from his win at the blackjack table was given a bowl of rum-crispie-soup.
So I tried to make rum balls. I say 'try' because the end result was most certainly NOT anything remotely resembling a ball of truffly, chocolaty, rummy deliciousness. Instead, well...
You know what? Let me go back to the beginning.
Fresh off the high of making gorgeous bread in my previous post (and yes, despite the wait time, the puffing and the sticky dough, I fully intend to experiment with bread again) I thought: Wow, I should make rum balls! Okay, truth be told I've wanted to make rum balls since my last day of classes when a classmate brought in homemade rum balls and handed out the ridiculously easy looking recipe (<--baking gods - they're just waiting for me to say it!). I all but ran to the nearest grocery store and bought:
Ingredients!
one can
one bag of chocolate chips
rum
vanilla
Tada!
You mix'em all together. That's it! You chill them and then you roll them into rum ball loveliness complete with powdered sugar or sprinkles! It just sounds perfect, doesn't it? Who could possibly mess this up?
Well, I think it goes back to that condensed VS evaporated milk thing. You see, I've always thought that they were the same thing (And you know what? I can hear all you kitchen-savy folk shaking your head and face-palming at me). Well, I quickly learned that - guess what - they're not the same thing. Condensed milk is more like sugary milk syrup that can thicken and bind to other ingredients like chocolate chips, vanilla and rum.
Evaporated milk on the other hand... isn't... and doesn't.
Thus after putting all my ingredients in the bowl I found myself staring at, what can only be described as, chocolate-rum milk - a very expensive drink to enjoy with your pb&j.
I swore.
I've been told by a baker that you're never supposed to swear or get angry around chocolate but I did it anyway and I think the chocolate heard me, because it was resolute about not thickening. So I grabbed my laptop and fought through the jungle of recipe websites out there to find hints on how to thicken up my rum ball hopefuls. I wasn't giving up without a fight.
I won't bore you with the details, sufficed to say that over the next hour I added: powdered sugar, flour, crumbled up crackers and (oh get ready for it - this was an act of desperation) Rice Crispies. Even as I was tossing them into the bowl voices in my head were shouting out:
What are you doing?
NO!
Egads girl, you've ruined it!
This will never work....
And the voices were right.
I swore again and decided that these were not going to turn into rum balls without help, so I shoved them into the fridge behind the cucumber (yes THAT cucumber) and hoped my bowl of chocolate soup would magically transform. Then I went and read a book.
No, I'm not kidding. I hid my problem and ran away from it. What? You've never acted like a five year old?
Okay, in all fairness I knew I was going to have to deal with my chocolate soup eventually, but that eventually would include a man-friend with new ideas on how to fix the problem and perhaps even a: "Oh that's happened to me before! Here's what we have to do!"
Man-friend came home. You know what the man-friend did when I showed him the chocolate soup/rum-balls-that-weren't? He rolled up his sleeves, assessed the situation from all angles, took a sip of beer and the took the bowl out of the fridge. Then he PUT IT IN THE FREEZER! He was as clueless as I was!
Well at that point I was done with the idea of rum balls, cracked an egg into that soup and tossed it in the oven. That's right folks, when in doubt set it on fire. Foolproof.
And you know what happened? Man-friend and I actually stared in shock at what we'd created, because it made absolutely no sense. Souffle. My rum balls turned into a souffle! The whole mix puffed up and the Rice Crispies crackled and stiffened into a hard shell on the top, and underneath that hard shell was warm smooth souffle. It was delicious!
Somehow my oven opened a portal into a 5-star restaurant's kitchen (I'm guessing somewhere in Monte Carlo) and pulled the old switch-a-roo. While my man-friend and I were able to enjoy a delicious $90.00 souffle baked in Monaco, some poor man fresh from his win at the blackjack table was given a bowl of rum-crispie-soup.
- I'm sorry man in Monte Carlo. I hope we can still be friends.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Baking Bread
Bread is delicious.
You disagree? Try some baguette. You will see.
However, bread is also expensive. And the more delicious the bread, like pumpernickel or (as I've already mentioned) baguette, the more expensive the bread. And to be quite honest the store-brand, white-bread (no matter how cheap) just makes me cringe at its lack of flavour... and how unnatural it looks. I mean, white-bread BP&J? Just try and think of something more fake-wholesome looking. I can't. No really, I can't.
So, to save money AND avoid creepy bread, my man-friend and I thought that it might be fun to try baking bread from scratch. Now, despite past disasters with brownies and biscuits, I am actually a decent baker and have been known to make up my own cookie recipes from time to time... and then forget what the hell I did and never be able to make them again. So, it seemed fitting that I would be the one to try my hand at bread.
Four ingredients? (that's it?)
4 cups of flour
1/2 tsp of salt
2 tsps of yeast (which makes the whole house smell like baking - yum!)
1 tsp of sugar
How hard can this be!? Dude, bread is going to be easy!
Quotes that swiftly followed this deceleration:
... when is yeast frothy? How do you know when its frothy?...
... OMG get it off me!...
... wait, I was supposed to add water?...
... OMG get it off me!!...
Oh... I should never be allowed to speak. The baking gods just lie in wait, I swear. They're hiding behind the stove, or under a mixing bowl just waiting for over-confident bakers to say over-confident things. Then they make your furnace room cold so that the warm place you were going to let your dough rise looks like the north pole!
And on that note, some thoughts about baking bread.
It's sticky and it takes a lot more time than you think it will. This is why jobless, medieval housewives baked bread. They were in their houses all day. And I'll bet they invited bread-buddies over, because they needed conversation to occupy the many hours of waiting for the dough to rise.
I know I wish I had a bread-buddy right now... instead I just have Cambridge (yes, I named my laptop). I have been in the kitchen for hours! No really, hours. As I type, I am sitting (wearing my sparkly apron) on my kitchen floor and waiting. Yep, just waiting for my dough to become puffier dough; because apparently under that tea-towel, my dough is rising and breadifying... and then I will have to knead it down and let it rise again... like I'm some sort of bread bully. Then I will put it in a pan and wait for it rise again before I shove the whole thing in an oven and set it on fire!
Hours.
So, as you can imagine, as I sit, I am reflecting on my experiences with all this bread business and I have come to some conclusions, which I hope others will find helpful.
1) If you start baking by cleaning your kitchen, you'll want to keep that kitchen clean throughout the entire baking process.... this is silly. Don't think this way. I never will again! I say this because as soon as you even look at the flour it puffs onto everything. EVERYTHING. The bowl - puff! Your hair - puff! The floor - PUFF!
It will puff down your shirt and you won't even notice until you are sitting with your laptop, and flour is somehow puffing onto your keyboard. .... I am not speaking from experience or anything.
Damn you flour... why must you go in everything tasty.
2) Keep your cell phone out of the kitchen. When you are making ratatouille, people will laugh your mistakes (again I do not speak from experience, or anything) and, most recently, I've learned that when you are elbow deep in kneading bread and puffed in flour, people will text you. And I don't mean one text, I mean some trilly text-tone will flitter all around you for ten minutes announcing the joyous arrival of your many text messages, until you are ready to either crush that cheerful little bastard of text-tone with your makeshift bread bowl (in my case, a casserole dish) or try to respond to these texts with your nose (again... I do not speak from experience).
3) Never laugh in the face of the baking gods.
You disagree? Try some baguette. You will see.
However, bread is also expensive. And the more delicious the bread, like pumpernickel or (as I've already mentioned) baguette, the more expensive the bread. And to be quite honest the store-brand, white-bread (no matter how cheap) just makes me cringe at its lack of flavour... and how unnatural it looks. I mean, white-bread BP&J? Just try and think of something more fake-wholesome looking. I can't. No really, I can't.
So, to save money AND avoid creepy bread, my man-friend and I thought that it might be fun to try baking bread from scratch. Now, despite past disasters with brownies and biscuits, I am actually a decent baker and have been known to make up my own cookie recipes from time to time... and then forget what the hell I did and never be able to make them again. So, it seemed fitting that I would be the one to try my hand at bread.
Four ingredients? (that's it?)
4 cups of flour
1/2 tsp of salt
2 tsps of yeast (which makes the whole house smell like baking - yum!)
1 tsp of sugar
How hard can this be!? Dude, bread is going to be easy!
Quotes that swiftly followed this deceleration:
... when is yeast frothy? How do you know when its frothy?...
... OMG get it off me!...
... wait, I was supposed to add water?...
... OMG get it off me!!...
Oh... I should never be allowed to speak. The baking gods just lie in wait, I swear. They're hiding behind the stove, or under a mixing bowl just waiting for over-confident bakers to say over-confident things. Then they make your furnace room cold so that the warm place you were going to let your dough rise looks like the north pole!
And on that note, some thoughts about baking bread.
It's sticky and it takes a lot more time than you think it will. This is why jobless, medieval housewives baked bread. They were in their houses all day. And I'll bet they invited bread-buddies over, because they needed conversation to occupy the many hours of waiting for the dough to rise.
I know I wish I had a bread-buddy right now... instead I just have Cambridge (yes, I named my laptop). I have been in the kitchen for hours! No really, hours. As I type, I am sitting (wearing my sparkly apron) on my kitchen floor and waiting. Yep, just waiting for my dough to become puffier dough; because apparently under that tea-towel, my dough is rising and breadifying... and then I will have to knead it down and let it rise again... like I'm some sort of bread bully. Then I will put it in a pan and wait for it rise again before I shove the whole thing in an oven and set it on fire!
Hours.
So, as you can imagine, as I sit, I am reflecting on my experiences with all this bread business and I have come to some conclusions, which I hope others will find helpful.
1) If you start baking by cleaning your kitchen, you'll want to keep that kitchen clean throughout the entire baking process.... this is silly. Don't think this way. I never will again! I say this because as soon as you even look at the flour it puffs onto everything. EVERYTHING. The bowl - puff! Your hair - puff! The floor - PUFF!
It will puff down your shirt and you won't even notice until you are sitting with your laptop, and flour is somehow puffing onto your keyboard. .... I am not speaking from experience or anything.
Damn you flour... why must you go in everything tasty.
2) Keep your cell phone out of the kitchen. When you are making ratatouille, people will laugh your mistakes (again I do not speak from experience, or anything) and, most recently, I've learned that when you are elbow deep in kneading bread and puffed in flour, people will text you. And I don't mean one text, I mean some trilly text-tone will flitter all around you for ten minutes announcing the joyous arrival of your many text messages, until you are ready to either crush that cheerful little bastard of text-tone with your makeshift bread bowl (in my case, a casserole dish) or try to respond to these texts with your nose (again... I do not speak from experience).
3) Never laugh in the face of the baking gods.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Ratatouille
I love ratatouille.
I first made it in London with my sister-in-law. And the whole time we were cooking, other hostel-mates kept asking us "why are you making ratatouille", as though using the hostel's kitchen was a strange occurrence. By the way, that question should always be answered with: Why aren't you making ratatouille?
I mean, ratatouille is delicious! It's like making a vegetable pasta sauce/stew that you're going to eat all on its own. It's colourful. It's healthy. It's - well if you haven't tried ratatouille then you just don't know what you're missing.
And there are so many ways to make ratatouille. You can bake it. You can cook the whole thing in a frying pan. You can just order it in a restaurant. The possibilities are endless!
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
A few days ago I was shopping at the absurdly overpriced St John's Sobeys that people flock to for its free plastic bags... and overpriced everything else (really makes you question people's priorities). However, in the midst of the $7 per lb apples I found on-sale-peppers! Now, like any normal person, my immediate thought was: I could SO make ratatouille with these!
But I didn't. Nothing else required for making ratatouille was on sale... because its Sobeys. Instead, THAT night, I made chicken soup from scratch (without the noodles). The next day though, I went to the Dominion, which is just Loblaws with an identity crisis, and I bougth:
Ingredients
eggplant
zucchini
onions
garlic
peppers (already purchased)
And home I went to make my ratatouille... except that took a while because I FaceTimed my family and we talked ALL afternoon. I didn't get anything done.
oops.
Well, that's not completely true. I finally realized that I was on a camera phone and propped up my phone in the cupboard while I put on a cooking show... and sadly, this is not the first time I've done this. I think the apron gives me an alter-ego or something.
Anyway, so there I am, showing off spices and ingredients and talking about what I'm doing, until I get to my zucchini. I quickly learned that it wasn't a zucchini at all.
It was a cucumber.
Now, before you think that I can't tell my vegetables apart, let me just say that even the receipt rang this baby in as a zucchini. This was one convincing cucumber. It was a cucumber on a mission. Well too bad for the cucumber, I had no use for it in my ratatouille - or any other dish. Instead I chopped up the rogue vegetable and stuck it my fridge to await its fate.
I still had all my other ingredients, plus a squash, so I made some sort of curried eggplant/pepper/squash soup. It was lumpy and delicious... but it was not ratatouille :(
I first made it in London with my sister-in-law. And the whole time we were cooking, other hostel-mates kept asking us "why are you making ratatouille", as though using the hostel's kitchen was a strange occurrence. By the way, that question should always be answered with: Why aren't you making ratatouille?
I mean, ratatouille is delicious! It's like making a vegetable pasta sauce/stew that you're going to eat all on its own. It's colourful. It's healthy. It's - well if you haven't tried ratatouille then you just don't know what you're missing.
And there are so many ways to make ratatouille. You can bake it. You can cook the whole thing in a frying pan. You can just order it in a restaurant. The possibilities are endless!
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
A few days ago I was shopping at the absurdly overpriced St John's Sobeys that people flock to for its free plastic bags... and overpriced everything else (really makes you question people's priorities). However, in the midst of the $7 per lb apples I found on-sale-peppers! Now, like any normal person, my immediate thought was: I could SO make ratatouille with these!
But I didn't. Nothing else required for making ratatouille was on sale... because its Sobeys. Instead, THAT night, I made chicken soup from scratch (without the noodles). The next day though, I went to the Dominion, which is just Loblaws with an identity crisis, and I bougth:
Ingredients
eggplant
zucchini
onions
garlic
peppers (already purchased)
And home I went to make my ratatouille... except that took a while because I FaceTimed my family and we talked ALL afternoon. I didn't get anything done.
oops.
Well, that's not completely true. I finally realized that I was on a camera phone and propped up my phone in the cupboard while I put on a cooking show... and sadly, this is not the first time I've done this. I think the apron gives me an alter-ego or something.
Anyway, so there I am, showing off spices and ingredients and talking about what I'm doing, until I get to my zucchini. I quickly learned that it wasn't a zucchini at all.
It was a cucumber.
Now, before you think that I can't tell my vegetables apart, let me just say that even the receipt rang this baby in as a zucchini. This was one convincing cucumber. It was a cucumber on a mission. Well too bad for the cucumber, I had no use for it in my ratatouille - or any other dish. Instead I chopped up the rogue vegetable and stuck it my fridge to await its fate.
I still had all my other ingredients, plus a squash, so I made some sort of curried eggplant/pepper/squash soup. It was lumpy and delicious... but it was not ratatouille :(
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
The Voices in My Head
So, I think its safe to say that thoughts are made up of various theories and ideas. Not all of them are original and not all of them are even ours. A professor once told me: We're all speaking someone else's theory, the trick is to figure out whose.
I think I've gone one step further. I think I've started labeling the different, swirling theories and fears in my head. This may or may not make crazy.
I want a cookie! - that's probably my hunger talking... unless its my inner child. You're never going to be a writer, or an 'A' student, or a good person; and people SUCK! Is my inner cynic... he sounds a little like Darth Vader and I think he's friends with Doubt (such a bastard!).
Granted, these voices don't all shout out at once, and they certainly don't tell me to burn things (thank goodness). That would make me schizophrenic or a sufferer of Multiple Personality Disorder... which I am not.
However, I did have a... let's call it an incident. I think it was my inner grownup warring with my inner child. And I don't mean the sweet, happy inner child. I mean the upset, sacred of the world, let's hide until it all goes away child... you know? The one that most of us never really grow out of.
It went a little something like this.
Inner grown-up (who sounds oddly like Sam the American Eagle from the Muppets): Huzzah, I have finished a solid portion of my big essay due next week. Time to walk into the other room and grab the necessary primary source to continue this essay.
[I stood up and walked towards me stack of books... and then I walked right by them, into my bedroom, got under the covers and didn't move]
Inner grown-up: Jenny? What are you doing? You have a paper to finish.
Me (or possibly that inner child I was talking about): No.
Inner grown-up: Jenny, big girls don't hide from their homework. You are graduate student now. Graduate students don't hide under the covers.
Me: shhhhh! The laptop might hear you.
And that's the gist of it. I, a rational, functioning wannabe adult, hid like a small child from my homework. I hid, like it was going to eat me, or make scary faces at me... or something.
This is just further proof that our societal opinions about adulthood, grownups and the joys of independence may, in reality be a big pile of crap. We don't grow up, we just wear bigger shoes and more expensive coats.
And if we're lucky, no one will notice.
I think I've gone one step further. I think I've started labeling the different, swirling theories and fears in my head. This may or may not make crazy.
I want a cookie! - that's probably my hunger talking... unless its my inner child. You're never going to be a writer, or an 'A' student, or a good person; and people SUCK! Is my inner cynic... he sounds a little like Darth Vader and I think he's friends with Doubt (such a bastard!).
Granted, these voices don't all shout out at once, and they certainly don't tell me to burn things (thank goodness). That would make me schizophrenic or a sufferer of Multiple Personality Disorder... which I am not.
However, I did have a... let's call it an incident. I think it was my inner grownup warring with my inner child. And I don't mean the sweet, happy inner child. I mean the upset, sacred of the world, let's hide until it all goes away child... you know? The one that most of us never really grow out of.
It went a little something like this.
Inner grown-up (who sounds oddly like Sam the American Eagle from the Muppets): Huzzah, I have finished a solid portion of my big essay due next week. Time to walk into the other room and grab the necessary primary source to continue this essay.
[I stood up and walked towards me stack of books... and then I walked right by them, into my bedroom, got under the covers and didn't move]
Inner grown-up: Jenny? What are you doing? You have a paper to finish.
Me (or possibly that inner child I was talking about): No.
Inner grown-up: Jenny, big girls don't hide from their homework. You are graduate student now. Graduate students don't hide under the covers.
Me: shhhhh! The laptop might hear you.
And that's the gist of it. I, a rational, functioning wannabe adult, hid like a small child from my homework. I hid, like it was going to eat me, or make scary faces at me... or something.
This is just further proof that our societal opinions about adulthood, grownups and the joys of independence may, in reality be a big pile of crap. We don't grow up, we just wear bigger shoes and more expensive coats.
And if we're lucky, no one will notice.
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