Cooking Trial and Error Method

Today was the first day of bread baking. I had low expectations. If baking bread was truly as easy as people sometimes say it is, then we'd all be doing it more often. Making dough isn't hard. Turning on the oven isn't hard. What is hard is the bread that comes out of the oven. Hard and heavy.

I ate some of the bread inside the crust. It tasted alright. But this isn't what I hope for when I bake bread. I guess I want baguettes. Or sourdough. Reading about that tells me that the very first thing I need is different flour, probably bread flour. I'll research more before trying again. Or else I'll try something else, like pizza dough or rolls.
While having adventures in the kitchen, I assisted Julia with her craft project. Giving this child a bottle of glue is the same thing as making the bottle of glue disappear. She loves nothing more than to pour things out of containers, especially slow things like glue or syrup.

Back to my mixing, I made chili.

It was good. From now on I think I'll cut every recipe in half or more because it's crazy how much food the average recipe makes. Why is that? Do people who write recipes think that we are all making enough food for a football team? I want recipes that use less and avoid leftovers. I'm not really big into freezing or canning a lot of food. My idea for the most part, is to cook fresh, eat fresh. I wish every recipe made 4 servings and that if you wanted more, you would do the math to increase it, instead of the other way around. At least the AllRecipes website has a calculator to do the math.

Missing the photographs today were the homemade marshmallows, which came out fine except for the half of the batch that I mixed with rice crispy treats. For some reason the homemade marshmallow didn't work for that at all. The crispies are too fluffy and chewy, as if they absorbed too much moisture from the marshmallow. Very annoying.

Another failure happened on my second attempt at a kids' treat when I made chocolate chip cookies. I could make them in my sleep. I was sleeping when I grabbed the lemon extract instead of the vanilla extract. Oops! I kept going.

They looked good. But they didn't taste right. Tom said "Lemony." Ellie said "yucky."

Actually the lemon was mild. The real problem was likely the mini morsel chips, which were semisweet and harder than my usual choice of chips, the milk chocolate chips. Nobody wants a chocolate chip cookie that isn't sweet.

So onward I will go, trying things until I am a cook for my own household.

Samosas

My two new pots are part of my inspiration to improve my cooking. Both were great discount finds. Both were things I've been wanting forever. The copper pot is sensitive and conducts heat very well. It's going to be great for candy making and other cooking. The cast iron dutch oven pot is best for braising (I think that's the right word) or roasting. That will be one of my most used pots for certain.

Tonight I made Samosas. Wow it really was pretty easy, even as a merged two recipes and tinkered with them on the fly. I will definitely make these again.
The dough is puff pastry from the store. I'd never used it before and it was much easier to handle than I expected. I cut each piece into thirds, then each of those thirds into halves. On a lightly floured counter, I rolled them a couple times to almost double their size. These rectangles waited on non-stick baking mats while I made the filling.

In my pot I sauteed 1 tbsp of olive oil with one small onion (diced) until the onion became translucent. To this I added 3 cans of chick peas. One of the cans was 19 ounces and two of the cans were 12 ounces. Five minutes of letting that cook on low heat, stirring a bit.

I mixed half a cup of apple juice with 1 tbsp of curry paste (from the international foods section at the grocery store). I added this to the pot.

I also added 1 tbsp of chopped fresh cilantro.

Then I added a cup of plain yogurt.

Stir, watch, cook, about 10 minutes I would estimate, while the flavors combine.

As a last step, I mashed this mixture with my immersion stick blender, directly in my pot. You don't have to mash the filling. You could use a potato masher and crush it partway. Or you could leave the chick peas whole. Personally I think it tastes a lot better when the filling is mixed/mashed. I don't like to crunch the skin of chick peas while eating. I just want the flavors all totally combined.

I put about a quarter cup of filling into each pastry rectangle and folded them over. Actually I tried to make them into pyramids like I recall eating at the Indian restaurant.

Last step - brush the tops with egg wash so they will be golden brown. 1 egg and 1 tbsp water.

Bake 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown and the tips are a pinch crispy, as you would do with a pie.

Eat with a bit of sour cream if you like. Delicious!

Cheep Cheep Meow

Easter is coming early this year. We've got some little chicks to guard the candy dish.

I've been trying to upgrade the kitchen. I got two new pots and a better colander. This inspired me to clear out the cabinets. BlackJack was not entirely helpful.
He also held my laptop and coffee machine for ransom until I focused my attention completely on his needs.

What didn't make the photography list was my attempt to make roasted pork shoulder, and ultimately pulled pork. I'm not a big fan of meat in general, so it was difficult to cook with mixed feelings for the pig. The lure of flavor pressed me forward and I got him in the oven with smoker chips. It was supposed to cook about 6 hours. Turned out it took closer to 10 hours. I fell asleep and never got dinner (or any pictures). Tom finished the cooking and said it worked but was too spicy, most likely due to the store-bought spice rub. Anyhow I don't care because I am moving on to vegetables where I feel more comfortable.

Vegetables and desserts. These are my favorite areas of cuisine.

Banana Pancakes by the hearth

This morning I made Ina Garten's banana pancake recipe. All of us agreed they were the best pancakes we've ever eaten. Somewhere between dense and fluffy, however impossible that sounds. They were so tasty and filling. Dicing the banana was so much better than just slicing it.

There was some relaxing this afternoon.

Still cold here. Tom keeps the fire going.

Maple Sugar Weekend

New Hampshirites have been coming out of their warm houses to talk to the trees lately.

It's maple season. Warmer days thaw the sap in the sugar maple trees. The sap drips into the taps, which drip into the buckets. That's the easy part. Then you've got to boil it down for 8 hours, knowing when to stop to achieve the light golden amber syrup we all love.
It takes a lot of sap for a little syrup. Some folks try to increase their load by building sugar shacks. This little building has a big cooking stove inside to boil larger amounts of sap than you could do on your stove.
Nights are still cold. The shaded side of the tree has ice where the sunny side has puddles.

Bugs begin to appear now. Buds appear on every tree.

Most colors on the landscape of the woods are still muted browns, blues and evergreen.
Tom's been chopping wood. This is an easy time to get into the woods to select trees for chopping. The ground is relatively clear of weeds and brush and bushes.
Ubi is getting older and spends less time chasing chipmunks. She'll chase them for a minute and then move along.
I tried to make homemade donuts. Looks good but tastes bad. Right into the trash.

I should have made banana bread instead.

Blog Work

I'm so bored with my blog.

And everything.

So I've decided to experiment with a new style.

First flowers of the year

We're trying to get spring moving along here.

The first flowers have popped up in the garden. So nice to see these cheerful crocus blooms poking up through the leaves.
Hopefully this will be a great summer for our gardens.

Bubbles

Today was my first day back to commuting my kid to kindergarten and trying to hang out with my 3 year old until she comes out again in the afternoon. It was a dark and cold day, adding to the misery of driving too much with no higher purpose. I felt I was wasting my life away.

So we bought a bubble machine and went home.

Between feeding and bathing and playing with Julia, I watched parts of the apple presentation about their new gadget, the ipad. Naturally I want one.
But it's more than that, I hope. I feel a sense of newness with the concept of modernizing my day to day routines. Yes I am hoping to get back to working, part time and then full time. But also, I hope to update the technology of my daily life, as well as my actions with those machines. Why spend all this time taking pictures, uploading, editing, blogging, sewing, surfing the internet, trying to gain information, connect with people. It's all good. But maybe I can do it in a better way. I have a feeling my practices are outdated and overly time consuming. I want to modernize my life.

Taking to the Outdoors

Another record breaking warm day here in New England. We came home from swim lessons as quickly as possible to enjoy the sun in our own backyard. The sisters say one of their favorite parts of home is the swing set.

We soaked up the late afternoon hours over at the town tennis court. Posh tennis clubs are a faint memory to me now. Even with a cracked old court with ice hills in the surface, I still feel a deep connection somehow to the essence of the sport. Just looking at the tennis court makes me feel more at home than I have ever felt anywhere. And then I begin to wonder again, how can I spend more of the rest of my life on a tennis court?
Four courts and 2 people. Ironic, isn't it, that one of the challenges of tennis it works out best for one or two people (not like soccer or basketball); yet without a community of players, it is difficult to grow the game.
Luckily for me, there is hope within my own family. Two daughters. Still young. But maybe they will like the game. Maybe someday we can play together.
Ellie, age 6, stepped out on that court today like a total natural. She is taking to the movements now so much easier than last year or the year before. Maybe that means this year she will come to the court more than once or twice in the summer.
It's funny to look at this picture. There is the tennis court and there is my child. If I had come to know the tennis court before having the child, I probably would have turned my life inside out to do whatever was necessary to make my life a tennis life. But children trumped tennis. At least for their childhood years, I feel a stronger pull to support them than I do to escape to the haven of the court.

Here are the weights for the next twenty years. As the children need me less, I may turn towards tennis. Where children come to the court, I find interception of the things most meaningful to my life.

More Springy Than Usual

How many days have we been home from our trip? Time has flown by as I have been inside the photo programs on my computer, editing and deleting and organizing. I almost didn't notice that the sun followed us home. Spring has arrived a month early! This never happens.

I tried to make a vegetable egg thing.

The best news, even better than the wonderful weather this week, is that Julia is now officially three years old. Like turning a switch, she is instantly older and more mature. She has been getting along so well with her big sister. The two of them played together all day with very little supervision needed. I got to clean and scrub and mop and fold laundry all morning with hardly an interruption.
I promised to stop washing at 11 am. Then we would go out to enjoy the day.
This might not look gorgeous but it's amazing to me. My backyard halfway free of snow. The garden is free of snow. The sun is warming the back side of the house so much that I was able to sit in my chair and read while the girls played on the swing set. What a great afternoon.
I couldn't be happier to have these warm days following our trip. It was going to be really hard to come back to the dark, cold winter. The warm sun is a welcome surprise making everything seem positive.

A Cake at Disney World

Gee, I almost forgot to blog about my saga to arrange for a birthday cake during our Disney trip. Here are the pictures of the cake, which was pretty and big and tasty.

The reason I stop to blog about this was because getting it was somewhat of a challenge.
Disney World is an amazing place, so large that they own enough land to be their own official town, without need to conform to any town rules (since they make their own). Sometimes you can get the feeling that you are not only at a vacation resort or theme park, but that you are on a separate planet where typical expectations and circumstances do not apply.

Anyway I researched for weeks how to get a cake at Disney. The answer is to call the bakery from which you would like your cake prepared, then also speak with the cake hotline at Disney dining services, for the official ordering process. Most bakeries within Disney World will deliver only to a table service restaurant nearby, except for some which will deliver to your room for an additional charge. I wanted to pick ours up so I ordered from the Boardwalk Bakery, which happened to be within walking distance of our Epcot resort hotel (Beach Club).

Approximately 2 weeks before my date with the cake, I called directly to the Boardwalk Resort and asked to transfer to the bakery downstairs. I spoke with a pastry chef and asked very nicely if I could have a regular (meaning, not expensive) cake but somehow have it with pink frosting. Usually as soon as you do not get vanilla or chocolate, they call it a custom cake and the price becomes a minimum of 75 dollars. He said he would make a standard cake but make the vanilla frosting pink. Works for me! This brought the cost down to 45 dollars, which is still more than I've ever paid for a cake (except our wedding cake). But it was important to have this symbol of birthday celebration since this was the primary thing we presented to Julia. We didn't wrap any gifts or anything since the trip was such a big gift in itself.

The cake will live on forever in photos in the scrapbook.

Good thing because it isn't like we actually ate it! We were too full and too tired and too overwhelmed with Disney life. Nevertheless it did taste good and I think, I hope, I guess... Julia did indeed appreciate that this was her special day and she had the cake she imagined.

The Ariel snow glob on top was something I brought from home since a bakery cake topper would have been another 30 dollars. This snow globe was 8 dollars and she loved it. Snow globes are not permitted in carry on luggage but we were allowed to bring it in our stowed/ checked luggage.

All in all, a success story. Would I do it again? No. Next birthday we celebrate at Disney (or anywhere) will be any cake or item with a candle on it that happens to be offered.

Disney offers free birthday cupcakes at every table service restaurant on property. That would have been fine I think, if we had not made such a big deal of the cake before hand.

Or you can get a standard, pre-made (frozen then thawed) vanilla or chocolate cake with no name on it for 21 dollars. That might have been fine too if Julia had not specifically dreamed up a "pink cake with chocolate inside."

Anyway she had her cake and I was happy for her biggest birthday ever.

Hoop Dee Doo Review show at Disney World

We went to the song and dance dinner show at Fort Wilderness, at Disney World. I wasn't sure what to expect. We saved it for the last night. Turned out to be a great show. When we go back someday, we'll put this show to the first night of the trip to get us in the right frame of mind to enjoy the true Disney experience.

The characters in the show are funny and charming. Although the jokes are simple, they are well delivered and good for a laugh. In fact, the entire audience is laughing for almost the entire show.
Dinner is a set menu of salad, corn bread, friend chicken, BBQ ribs, baked beans and mashed potatoes. It's very tasty, classic American flavors. It's all you can eat but we couldn't even get through the original servings they brought to the table.
The performers become their characters. They move through the main floor. The relatively small extra charge of sitting in Tier One seating was absolutely and definitely worth while, as you feel you are actually in the show. The characters interact with you or at least come right up by you and look you in the eye. It's much more of a Disney magical feeling than meeting the characters because these folks are so animated and colorful, as opposed to Mickey being very quiet and rather still. Gratuity is included in the price.

The humor is rambunctious and silly. The motion is fast and the tunes run the list from Davie Crocket to Happy Birthday to original tunes like when they sing to introduce dessert.
I didn't need a close up lens for this shot. Dolly was right up at our table, singing full blast.

My plate.

Which I shared with Julia, who sat on me the entire show.

Twirl your napkin, dance around.

Strawberry shortcake is the dessert.

I give the Hoop Dee Doo Review show an A+ for entertainment, good food and all around good old Disney magic. It's a great way to share a special experience with your family.