Holy Guacamole!

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.

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?

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.