Here it is, the last day of July. I haven't won any blogging challenges, since I missed two days, but this is indeed my thirty-first post of the month.
So, in retrospect, could I be a food blogger? Sure. Thirty-one posts in which I say the word "food" somehow, that counts towards something. SHOULD I be a food blogger? Nope. I appreciate the mental exercise of daily writing, and the way it documents my life (for my Mom). And I think that I will continue surrounding myself with the topic, because it is the thing about which I most like to think and talk. But on days when I don't have anything to say, about food or otherwise, I'm not crazy about boring you with the things I still think I have to put down on the screen.
Like tonight. There is a lot to talk about, a lot of crazy shit went down between last night and tonight. But I'm not even ready to discuss, and don't want to jinx the parts that could be good or harp on the parts that could be bad until the dust has settled. I'll keep you posted; even as early as tomorrow I should know more. In the meantime, I don't feel bad about closing the computer, washing my face, taking out my contacts, curling up in bed with a Real Simple and making it through three pages before I turn off the light. I get to sleep in a little tomorrow, since Austin and I took a joint day off to take care of things. I do promise to not take a whole month off, like the shock therapy after November NaBloPoMo. I will have more news to share, and I'll keep trying to take food pics as we're learning this new camera.
Sweet dreams out there, blogosphere. Rabbits rabbits rabbits.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The new 20
This is Casey reporting for Delaney because she's in a brown-out. Yep, that's apparently a term folks use for what happens when your power is out enough to make you unable to blog and worried about your many days worth of leftovers going bad, but not like totally out. Sounds scary.
Anyway, she suggested I tell you that she won't eat pizza without ranch dressing. It took me a few moments to figure out that this comment was intended to satisfy the food related aspect of this evening's post. I actually had pizza with ranch dressing for dinner, so there.
I think this should be good enough to keep Laney on her NaBloPoMo. She'll be back with y'all shortly!
Anyway, she suggested I tell you that she won't eat pizza without ranch dressing. It took me a few moments to figure out that this comment was intended to satisfy the food related aspect of this evening's post. I actually had pizza with ranch dressing for dinner, so there.
I think this should be good enough to keep Laney on her NaBloPoMo. She'll be back with y'all shortly!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Sophie Germain
Dark Chocolate and Orange Tart with Toasted Almonds
Well-Loved RecipeI first tried this recipe in the fall of 2003. I printed it out from Epicurious and made notes after reading the reviews. Among the changes I noted: multiplying the filling recipe by one and a half, taking the crust out of the oven after 9 minutes instead of the recommended 12, and stirring the filling into the ganache before spreading it into the crust.
Chocolate Shortbread Crust with cinnamon and sea salt, already bakedIt's not a complicated dessert, really. I would give it an intermediate rating for difficulty. The only real trick is starting early enough. At least two days before you plan on serving it, or you'll be in the kitchen all day. That first time, I decided to make the tart to celebrate Casey's first week of law school, and planned ahead accordingly. I made the dough for the crust two days ahead and let it chill overnight, then rolled it out and baked it the day before.
Filling: chopped toasted almonds, chopped candied orange peel, brown sugar and cinnamonI also candied the orange peel ahead of time, and let it cool and dry overnight before chopping. The filling is just the candied orange peel, toasted slivered almonds (both all chopped up), plus sugar (the recipe calls for white but I've used brown) and cinnamon. Then I made a ganache, which is so simple that it makes me laugh, and poured a little into the filling so it would hold together on top of the crust. Spread the filling into the crust and pour the rest of the ganache over, then chill overnight. Really, not difficult.
Melting the chopped bittersweet chocolate in the hot cream to make ganacheThe night I planned to serve this tart, Trent and I went to a baseball game. The plan was for us to head back to the South Street house after the game, where we'd meet up with Casey, Jenny and Patrick and enjoy the dessert together in celebration. But the ballgame went to extra innings, and we started getting impatient phone calls from C, J & P.
Jenny: "We want to go ahead and eat the tart. We're tired of waiting."
Me: "No, just sit tight. I want us to all eat it together, so it will be special."
Ganache all smoothed out, then a little bit added to the filling to hold it togetherAnother phone call, ten minutes later...
Jenny: "We're getting really hungry and tired. We want to eat the tart. Stop being selfish."
Me: "Don't be mean! Just be patient!"
Phone rings again...
Jenny: "We aren't waiting anymore. We're going to eat it!"
Me: "FINE. Screw you guys. Whatever." Click.
Filling spread into the tart crustAnd then another call, two minutes later...
Jenny (sounds sheepish): "Laney? We love you..."
Me: "Yeah, yeah."
Patrick: "Laney? We love you..."
Me: "Fine, fine."
Casey: "Laney? We love you..."
Finished, with ganache poured over the filling, smooth and shiny. Just chill!I got home to over a third of the tart (which is supposed to feed 16) gone, and a note next to the pan on the counter:
Front
If you can't read it, it says:
Suggested Names:
1. Holy Fucking Shit Tart
2. Ain't Fuckin' Around Pie
3. Does somebody have to go to law school to get this? Tart
More->
FrontIf you can't read it, it says:
Suggested Names:
1. Holy Fucking Shit Tart
2. Ain't Fuckin' Around Pie
3. Does somebody have to go to law school to get this? Tart
More->
Back4. Sex Pie All grown up
5. Everybody Loves Delaney (and we're gonna stay up all night thinking about it) Tart
(heart) J, P, C
After all these years, this is still known as the HFS Tart. I brought two to work today, and am feeling pretty good about my status as Most Popular Employee. Who Also Tries the Hardest to Be Most Popular. And Has No Problem Resorting to Shameless Bribery for Affection If Necessary.
Monday, July 28, 2008
far from February
Dad picked me up from work today and took me home so we could look at our impending dooms of home repair. Turns out the prognosis wasn't terrible: fixable hot water faucet, dying-but-not-dead-yet a/c system. No emergencies, just no running water in the kitchen tonight. He'll be here again tomorrow to repair the faucet, and we can hopefully ignore/encourage the air conditioning to just hang in there until we buy the house, at which point we're planning on replacing the whole damn thing. New ductwork and all, hopefully, to make the house more efficient and less, you know, hot.
I was pointing out to Dad that we could live with the a/c system at this level of terribleness, for the time being, because it's always this stuffy in our house, especially in the back. He agreed with me, but then said something like, "But you're my cooking girl. You need a comfortable kitchen."
This afternoon Suz and I were talking about babies, and siblings, and the story she heard on This American Life about girls who were switched at birth. Apparently when they found out, later in life, they realized that their personalities fit in much better with their birth families than the ones in which they were raised. We like to think that our lives are simply an overlapping of influences, but there is clearly something else there. I never really thought that I was born with a personality. I look at Ezra and Elijah and wonder at which points they will be different men, with different goals and ways of speaking. I'm surprised even now at their physical differences, when I mostly just think all tiny babies look the same. I found my picture of Elijah from the day after he was born, and the one I posted here of Ezra, and it's really remarkable the differences in babies' faces.
I think about my sisters and I, and we came from the same places, the exact same ones, and we turned out still very different in our personal selves. Was Jenny born stubborn? (yes.) Was Casey born permanently convinced of her own correctness? (yes.) Was I born prone to procrastination and easy distraction? (ah, yes.) There is the more extreme example of our California cousins, with whom we were raised in total equality, by our parents who are siblings in the most obvious ways, and I swear, those families couldn't be any more different than us.
And this is a silly point to which I'm leading, but how did I get to be a foodie? I know some people don't like that term, but I don't mind it. I don't want to be mistaken for the snob type of foodie. You all know that I will not just eat junk food but I will wallow in it. But I'm a foodie in the sense that I like to think about, talk about and do things relating to food. I'm sure I spent a quarter of my work day detailing my cooking disasters of the weekend (fried corn! that's all I'm going to say! exploding grease-filled kernel torpedoes!) to coworkers, and getting the goods on their own pulled pork and raspberry duck adventures. The friends that I have bonded with at this job, this is what we talk about. My amazing group of book club girlfriends, what do we do when we're all together? We eat. We exchange a month's worth of menu planning emails, and then we all cram into someone's kitchen and stuff our faces while we talk around food.
A few years ago my friend Craig asked me how I became a baseball lover, and I was able to respond to him (in essay form) with the rather precise timeline of my eventual love of the game. Tonight I was peacefully assembling tarts in my kitchen, moving about the motions of simmering cream, whisking ganache, and trying to think back to the time in my life when this started. As a little girl, I loved reading my mother's cookbooks, and eventually embraced my role as kitchen helper. But I don't remember feeling filled with thoughts of food the way I am now. Thoughts of candy? Is that the same thing? I started tackling baking projects, sometimes with Dad: decorating cakes, the baklava incident, salt water taffy that stained our hands blue. In college I was so poor and didn't have a working kitchen until my junior year. After that I started hosting dinner parties.
But I wonder, what did my parents think? Was this some obvious direction I was always heading, or was a fascination with food/cooking just another personality quirk that was revealed as I matured? The way other kids develop a penchant for mathematics or sports? Food is my hobby, my topic, my solace, my celebration. Tonight I reveled in my silent kitchen, my unrushed ballet of spatulas, measuring spoons, taking the lid off the jar of cinnamon with the dull end of a butter knife. Other times I love sharing the act of cooking. Projects like smoked pork butt or thai noodle soup are things that Austin and I can enjoy tackling together. I'm certain that my finest moments with Agnes have happened when one of us was at the stove and the other standing over the cutting board. I'm sure I don't have to explain that my fondest memories of both of my parents have occurred while we were sharing a kitchen.
I'm not quite sure where I'm leading with this, and my attention is waning as the evening draws to a close. I suppose it's not any good to try to identify the sources of my most basic self, any more than scrutinizing my needs for air and water. Is Lover of Food on the Meyers-Briggs test? (Is chocolate an emotion?) When my dad calls me his Cooking Girl, and my mom says I'm inspiring her with my food talk this month, and my sisters and friends are peppering me throughout each day with recipe discussions and ingredient ideas, I can see the bigger picture. Food is the physical representation of my need to take care of everyone.
The tentacles of these relationships run back and forth from Mom to Julia Child; from Dad to the black microwave cookbook, the pages stuck together with decades of toffee-making; from Jenny to the cold sesame noodles I haven't even made yet; from Casey to secret nights of boxed mac-and-cheese and vanilla ice cream with Hershey's syrup. From Agnes to the sledgehammer we used for crushing ice on the patio; from Megan to snapping green beans without a pause in conversation; from Amy to panicked ingredient substitution calls from the market; from Austin to that first flicker of wanting to lick ganache out of his beard. Distant and constant, primal and minute, the web of food in My Life and Family doesn't have a beginning, doesn't have to have come from anywhere. The only piece of advice my mother ever gave me that turned out to be untrue: Food is just fuel for the body. It is not. It's way more than that, and I'm glad for it.
Tomorrow: photo essay on the HFS Tart. That's right, I took pictures. And fair warning: this one involves some R-rated language. In my sisters' handwriting. Sorry, Mom.
I was pointing out to Dad that we could live with the a/c system at this level of terribleness, for the time being, because it's always this stuffy in our house, especially in the back. He agreed with me, but then said something like, "But you're my cooking girl. You need a comfortable kitchen."
This afternoon Suz and I were talking about babies, and siblings, and the story she heard on This American Life about girls who were switched at birth. Apparently when they found out, later in life, they realized that their personalities fit in much better with their birth families than the ones in which they were raised. We like to think that our lives are simply an overlapping of influences, but there is clearly something else there. I never really thought that I was born with a personality. I look at Ezra and Elijah and wonder at which points they will be different men, with different goals and ways of speaking. I'm surprised even now at their physical differences, when I mostly just think all tiny babies look the same. I found my picture of Elijah from the day after he was born, and the one I posted here of Ezra, and it's really remarkable the differences in babies' faces.
I think about my sisters and I, and we came from the same places, the exact same ones, and we turned out still very different in our personal selves. Was Jenny born stubborn? (yes.) Was Casey born permanently convinced of her own correctness? (yes.) Was I born prone to procrastination and easy distraction? (ah, yes.) There is the more extreme example of our California cousins, with whom we were raised in total equality, by our parents who are siblings in the most obvious ways, and I swear, those families couldn't be any more different than us.
And this is a silly point to which I'm leading, but how did I get to be a foodie? I know some people don't like that term, but I don't mind it. I don't want to be mistaken for the snob type of foodie. You all know that I will not just eat junk food but I will wallow in it. But I'm a foodie in the sense that I like to think about, talk about and do things relating to food. I'm sure I spent a quarter of my work day detailing my cooking disasters of the weekend (fried corn! that's all I'm going to say! exploding grease-filled kernel torpedoes!) to coworkers, and getting the goods on their own pulled pork and raspberry duck adventures. The friends that I have bonded with at this job, this is what we talk about. My amazing group of book club girlfriends, what do we do when we're all together? We eat. We exchange a month's worth of menu planning emails, and then we all cram into someone's kitchen and stuff our faces while we talk around food.
A few years ago my friend Craig asked me how I became a baseball lover, and I was able to respond to him (in essay form) with the rather precise timeline of my eventual love of the game. Tonight I was peacefully assembling tarts in my kitchen, moving about the motions of simmering cream, whisking ganache, and trying to think back to the time in my life when this started. As a little girl, I loved reading my mother's cookbooks, and eventually embraced my role as kitchen helper. But I don't remember feeling filled with thoughts of food the way I am now. Thoughts of candy? Is that the same thing? I started tackling baking projects, sometimes with Dad: decorating cakes, the baklava incident, salt water taffy that stained our hands blue. In college I was so poor and didn't have a working kitchen until my junior year. After that I started hosting dinner parties.
But I wonder, what did my parents think? Was this some obvious direction I was always heading, or was a fascination with food/cooking just another personality quirk that was revealed as I matured? The way other kids develop a penchant for mathematics or sports? Food is my hobby, my topic, my solace, my celebration. Tonight I reveled in my silent kitchen, my unrushed ballet of spatulas, measuring spoons, taking the lid off the jar of cinnamon with the dull end of a butter knife. Other times I love sharing the act of cooking. Projects like smoked pork butt or thai noodle soup are things that Austin and I can enjoy tackling together. I'm certain that my finest moments with Agnes have happened when one of us was at the stove and the other standing over the cutting board. I'm sure I don't have to explain that my fondest memories of both of my parents have occurred while we were sharing a kitchen.
I'm not quite sure where I'm leading with this, and my attention is waning as the evening draws to a close. I suppose it's not any good to try to identify the sources of my most basic self, any more than scrutinizing my needs for air and water. Is Lover of Food on the Meyers-Briggs test? (Is chocolate an emotion?) When my dad calls me his Cooking Girl, and my mom says I'm inspiring her with my food talk this month, and my sisters and friends are peppering me throughout each day with recipe discussions and ingredient ideas, I can see the bigger picture. Food is the physical representation of my need to take care of everyone.
The tentacles of these relationships run back and forth from Mom to Julia Child; from Dad to the black microwave cookbook, the pages stuck together with decades of toffee-making; from Jenny to the cold sesame noodles I haven't even made yet; from Casey to secret nights of boxed mac-and-cheese and vanilla ice cream with Hershey's syrup. From Agnes to the sledgehammer we used for crushing ice on the patio; from Megan to snapping green beans without a pause in conversation; from Amy to panicked ingredient substitution calls from the market; from Austin to that first flicker of wanting to lick ganache out of his beard. Distant and constant, primal and minute, the web of food in My Life and Family doesn't have a beginning, doesn't have to have come from anywhere. The only piece of advice my mother ever gave me that turned out to be untrue: Food is just fuel for the body. It is not. It's way more than that, and I'm glad for it.
Tomorrow: photo essay on the HFS Tart. That's right, I took pictures. And fair warning: this one involves some R-rated language. In my sisters' handwriting. Sorry, Mom.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
b stroke six
I don't even think I have time to get into all the mishaps today. And all the joys, of course. This morning we had a girlie breakfast dancing-movie party at Lauren's, and it was, delicious. And featured a special guest appearance by Brand New Ezra, the handsomest. It was pretty much a perfect afternoon, in good company, with great food (my contribution: hash brown casserole).
But things started to go wrong when I got home. I had intended to put together the HFS tart for the Emma staff (actually, two. Two HFS Tarts), and had already made the dough for the crusts and candied the orange peel this morning. I would like to think that I can make this tart in my sleep, but truthfully, I think my horrifically hot and muggy kitchen was working against me. I wrestled with a sticky and drippy dough and got chocolate on every item of clothing I was wearing (fortunately, those were all pajamas. I didn't put on pants today). Then finally I managed to get the dough fitted into the pans by basically pounding on it with my elbows, got the pans in the fridge to chill, and tried to shake my frustration off and concentrate on dinner.
The menu: Skillet Chicken Pot Pie, roasted CSA potatoes and fried corn. With no difficulties, I threw the potatoes in the oven, with onion and garlic and thyme, horseradish and Dijon mustard. I thought I was off to a pretty good start. This was probably at about 7:30? Then there was some kind of time suck between 7:30 and TEN, which was when dinner was actually finished. And apparently this time suck involved a bomb going off in our kitchen. Or at least that's how it looked when we went back in there after eating.
Honestly, I'll tell you about the rest tomorrow. I'm up against the midnight hour here, and I can't even keep my eyes open any longer. This way I'll have something to discuss tomorrow evening when I've only eaten leftovers all day. Ugh. I need an extra weekend.
But things started to go wrong when I got home. I had intended to put together the HFS tart for the Emma staff (actually, two. Two HFS Tarts), and had already made the dough for the crusts and candied the orange peel this morning. I would like to think that I can make this tart in my sleep, but truthfully, I think my horrifically hot and muggy kitchen was working against me. I wrestled with a sticky and drippy dough and got chocolate on every item of clothing I was wearing (fortunately, those were all pajamas. I didn't put on pants today). Then finally I managed to get the dough fitted into the pans by basically pounding on it with my elbows, got the pans in the fridge to chill, and tried to shake my frustration off and concentrate on dinner.
The menu: Skillet Chicken Pot Pie, roasted CSA potatoes and fried corn. With no difficulties, I threw the potatoes in the oven, with onion and garlic and thyme, horseradish and Dijon mustard. I thought I was off to a pretty good start. This was probably at about 7:30? Then there was some kind of time suck between 7:30 and TEN, which was when dinner was actually finished. And apparently this time suck involved a bomb going off in our kitchen. Or at least that's how it looked when we went back in there after eating.
Honestly, I'll tell you about the rest tomorrow. I'm up against the midnight hour here, and I can't even keep my eyes open any longer. This way I'll have something to discuss tomorrow evening when I've only eaten leftovers all day. Ugh. I need an extra weekend.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
spacetime dimensions
We finally made it around to the Thai-Ginger Rubbed Salmon with Green Curry Sauce tonight. Beautiful and delicious! And pretty danged easy. As the name indicates, there is a spice rub and a separate green curry sauce. We made rice and a tomato salad (loads of pretty little yellow tomatoes in the CSA box this week) and roasted squash and zucchini with balsamic and pine nuts. The whole meal made tons of food (at least three times more than we could eat, just the two of us) and came together gratifyingly fast.I took pictures of the whole process, just like I've been threatening to do since the arrival of the new camera, but now that I think about it, Blogger just isn't going to let me share them with you gracefully. Hmm. There isn't a captioning option, right? I don't think just lining up a bunch of photos is going to look very nice. I'll work on this some more and see what I can come up with.
I also had a new disaster to add to my Disaster List. I tried Jenny's damned caramel kettle corn and something went terribly wrong. I made the brown sugar syrup and made popcorn on the stovetop (which is new for me) and when I poured the syrup over the popcorn, as soon as it touched the bottom of the pan it burned. The pan was off the heat and couldn't possibly have been THAT hot for THAT long, but when I lifted it off the pot holder it was resting on, the pot holder was burned. How is this possible? And all the burned parts got distributed throughout the popcorn, so as much as I tried to pick out the edible bits, it was pretty much an epic fail. And I'm scared to throw it all away and see the bottom of my pan. Ready for the Oxyclean miracle trick.
In non-food news, there was a rather large snake in the rose bush/morning glory mess on the front porch this morning. Terrifying.
And something went wrong with the hot water in our kitchen sink tonight, which led us to also discover that our air conditioner has been dumping gallons of water onto our basement floor for god knows how long. These appear to be unrelated issues, and are both things we would sure rather not deal with until we OWN THE HOUSE. Dad's coming Monday to inspect, and I feel like I'm tiptoeing around for fear that something else is bound to go wrong.
Is there anything more disappointing than opening a Netflix envelope to find the disc OBVIOUSLY cracked? Damn. We're never going to make it through the first seven seasons of X-Files at this pace.
Friday, July 25, 2008
5x5
Another crazy week, all wrapped up. Busy at work, busy every night, just running on fumes here. After work today most of the Emma staff headed to the Flying Saucer for off-campus Beer:30, which was very fun but boy is that place not conducive to conversation. Towering ceilings, stone walls and tile floors do not an acoustic coziness make. I had those delicious soft pretzels with cheese and mustard sauces. And a pear cider, so pale that everyone asked if I was drinking water.
We walked over to Frist Fridays and fought our way through the crowds from one end to the other, finally locating Casey and Trent and then trying to visit in the middle of the horde. Made it upstairs to go (quickly) through the (beautiful) Tiffany exhibit and then headed east. Finally sat down for dinner at Las Maracas at 9:30, seated across the aisle from Sara and Adam and friends.
This was my first visit to Las Maracas, Austin's second. I had asked about it a million years ago but Megan, who lives very near there, said it wasn't good. They have apparently changed hands since her last visit there, and it was pretty delightful. Austin encouraged me to try Chuy's Special, which was basically the grilled meats from a traditional fajita dish, served on a bed of mexican rice with white cheese poured over the whole thing. With a packet of warm tortillas and some requested avocado on the side, it was pretty much all the things I love about mexican food without all the extra bits I never end up eating. The service was great, friendly, prompt, with a sense of humor. We didn't try any margaritas since I think a single drop of alcohol would have caused me to lay my head down on the table and snore. But I hear they are good...
That's my foodie report for tonight. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow. I swear to you that this weekend will involve some cooking adventures. I won't have it any other way.
We walked over to Frist Fridays and fought our way through the crowds from one end to the other, finally locating Casey and Trent and then trying to visit in the middle of the horde. Made it upstairs to go (quickly) through the (beautiful) Tiffany exhibit and then headed east. Finally sat down for dinner at Las Maracas at 9:30, seated across the aisle from Sara and Adam and friends.
This was my first visit to Las Maracas, Austin's second. I had asked about it a million years ago but Megan, who lives very near there, said it wasn't good. They have apparently changed hands since her last visit there, and it was pretty delightful. Austin encouraged me to try Chuy's Special, which was basically the grilled meats from a traditional fajita dish, served on a bed of mexican rice with white cheese poured over the whole thing. With a packet of warm tortillas and some requested avocado on the side, it was pretty much all the things I love about mexican food without all the extra bits I never end up eating. The service was great, friendly, prompt, with a sense of humor. We didn't try any margaritas since I think a single drop of alcohol would have caused me to lay my head down on the table and snore. But I hear they are good...
That's my foodie report for tonight. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow. I swear to you that this weekend will involve some cooking adventures. I won't have it any other way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
