holy cow!

The craft blog linked to a recipe of mine today.

Yes, I'm pretty much telling everyone.

taking my lemonness to new levels

I made pie. Lemon pie. It uses the whole lemon. No meringue. I totally dig it. Also, I have sprouts of oregano, chives and basil, but the picture was blurry.

I am totally domesticated. Wait, is that what I mean?

Superior help for hard working hands

Here's a useful little thingy.

My hands are wrecked this week. Completely. It started with a peeler gouge while I was making 250 poached pears. It went on to include some fabulously ugly blistered burns from tuna oil from the guy next to me on the line (Harumph! Indeed!) and some innumerable bumps, dings, cracks and overall dryness all thanks to what one of the sous chefs refers to as "the worst week every year" - and that's counting December. Now, I wouldn't lay claim to any vanity where my hands are concerned, but well, I am a girl. So this is one of my favorite fixes.

In a bowl mix a couple spoonfuls of plain yogurt or cream and a spoonful of honey. Add some ground almonds and a bit of rosewater if you've got it. Slather that on your hands, especially the backs of them, and throw on a pair of powder-free latex gloves. Go about your business for about ten minutes. Toss the gloves, rinse the hands in cool water. You could go all out at this point and moisturize your nails with almond oil and stuff like that but that's all up to you.

It really really helps and is way cheaper than some schmancy hand cream. Also, it tastes good. Don't look at me like that, it does.

Happy Easter and Vitamin C

When I asked if anyone planning to be at Easter dinner has any problems with lemon I'm not sure the message really got across. We'll see, in a few hours, how the uninitiated make out with Bon Appetit's Gingered Lemon Meringue Pie. It's tart...I mean, REALLY tart (and I tone it down and make it sweeter than the recipe calls). Kathy introduced us to this recipe along with the sour-puss faces that it draws many years ago. It's a once in a while treat.

Maybe the lemon juice will get rid of the cold holding the whole family hostage, me with laryngitis.

Does my desire to celebrate a mathematical constant make me a nerd?

So tomorrow is pi day (March 14th, get it? celebrate at 1:59?), and, not being the imaginative sort, I like to celebrate pi day with pie. Last year I made pie for every meal, but I am just not feeling that ambitious this year, so I settled on making two pies and bringing them into work. I decided on an old school mixed berry pie (read: I couldn't pick between cherry and blueberry, so I just threw both in there, and some blackberries to make it seem intentional), cornstarch thickened, and crust from scratch (of course, adoxograph would never forgive me if I did otherwise. For that matter, I would never forgive myself if I did otherwise, so it kind of works out).

That pie happened like this:

First came crust assembly, following a recipe adoxograph gave me about a gazillion months ago. I always have trouble with pie crusts because I have hot hands, and the butter wants to go all melty. It probably doesn't help that I am impatient.
While I was letting the dough rest (have to give the starches time to hydrate, man!), I prepped the filling, which was just frozen fruit, a little butter, a little salt, about a quarter cup of sugar, almond extract, and that corn starch I mentioned earlier.Oh yeah. And there's a graham cracker crust back there. Ignore that for now.

Once the filling was prepped, I rolled out and blind baked the bottom crust. While the blind baking happened, I rolled out the top crust. Then the blind baking was done, and I filled the pie...
...then placed the top crust and cut the thematically appropriate vent. SYMBOLIC!
That went into the oven, allowing me to focus on the other pie.

Oh, the other pie!

See, a few weeks ago, I had an idea, which is always a dangerous thing. And not just any idea, mind. A pie idea. Or piedea, I suppose. And it was a majestic piedea. See, it's Easter, and Easter means Peeps. Peeps are marshmallows, right? And if you'll recall from my thingaday posts, I'd been making toaster oven s'mores. Do you see where I am going with this?

Yeah, that's right. It's an Easter S'more Peep Massacre pie.

So you already saw the graham cracker crust resting idly alongside the berry filling, but here's another shot of that, for fun. I also made a chocolate custard while the dough for the other pie hydrated (no action shots on that; haven't yet worked out how to stir constantly and take a photo simultaneously). That cooled while the berry pie was baking, and then I proceeded to fill the graham cracker crust with the custard. Then came the Peeps. I bought four colors, and arranged them on top of the custard in the pie (oh, and check the completed berry pie. NICE).They look so innocent.
I started wondering whether they knew what was about to happen next. It was about at this point when I started laughing hysterically.
See, here's the thing: it's not a s'more if the marshmallow isn't toasted.

Thank goodness my dear friend was willing to loan me his kitchen torch.Note: Peeps do catch fire, just as you'd expect. Also those freaky brown dot eyeballs are not nearly as sturdy as I thought they would be.I have to say, I feel a little bad for melting their tiny faces off. But it had to be done. For science.

I was hot, and I was hungry.

Actually, I was tired and feeling lazy, and there were some trying moments today that demanded chocolate, and this only took twenty minutes if you also count the time I spent consuming the resulting product.

However, I still think there is something vaguely revelatory about the knowledge that you can make s'mores in a toaster oven even though I don't particularly like s'mores.

I know, I know, strange but true--they're just too sweet for my tastes.

Despite that, tonight was a s'more night:


Man, how many pictures are there of oatmeal in my entries?

Months have passed...

Months have passed with the baking on the increase...at least for me. Fortunately the holidays enabled me to do my requisite gift giving of baked goods and candies, to great acclaim. Photos of some of them will follow, per request of Adoxograph.

Now that my little girl is enjoying manipulating things with her hands, I'm trying to bake something at least once a week with her. This one, from a few months ago and recently repeated, Sourdough Italian, made with mostly wheat flour. Since we all like to eat it too, it's a win win.

To make room for the tuna!

I made chocolate Guinness cupcakes! And cream cheese frosting!

With those two forces combined (that will happen in the morning before work) I figure that I can take over the world.

Okay, jeez:
cake stuff:
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 cups sugar
2 cups ap flour
1 tsp baking soda
Pinch fine salt
1 bottle stout
1 stick butter, melted
1 big glorp vanilla extract
3 eggs
3/4 cup sour cream or yogurt or whatever substitute you have on hand

frosting stuff:
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup heavy cream
a pound or so of confectioners' sugar (I find the texture of this stuff unsettling)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Prep your muffin tins as per your preference. I usually do the little baking cups because I am lazy.

Mix everything in the cake list up to the salt together in one bowl. In a bigger bowl, mix the stout, melted butter, and vanilla, beat in the eggs, and mix in the sour cream. The liquid will look extremely unappetizing right up until the time you get the sour cream mixed in. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture, don't overmix because, you know, it's cake, and we don't want it to be tough, because that's nasty.

Fill your muffin tins. I found that a 1/4 cup scoop did pretty well for this, but I wasn't real precise about it or anything. Bake for about 12 minutes, turn your pans around, bake another 12 minutes. The cake is pretty moist, so you'll want to let them cool in the pan so they don't go awry.

For the icing, beat the softened cream cheese until it goes all fluffy. Beat in the heavy cream until the combo cheese/cream mixture goes all fluffy. Beat in the sugar (you may want to add more or less, depending upon how you like it) until the cheese/cream/sugar combo is fluffy.

It's a pretty lightweight icing, so definitely wait until the cupcakes cool before frosting, because that stuff will totally melt. Although, for the record, it is still quite tasty melted.

I cooked dinner!

Since you guys declared it is not cheating and it is the first meal I have cooked in , wow, I guess a week now, I am noting for the record that I made dinner! Chicken and green things with pasta in ugly sauce, to be sure, but at least I am mobile. Maybe tomorrow I will see if the fever burned the knit purl from my brain or if not-muscle memory makes my fingers still work.

no, I am not sharing my recipe for ugly sauce.

V-day

All right, so Valentine's Day is generally not my favorite thing. Here are a few reasons why: it sort of justifies not being romantic on a day to day basis by creating a single day when romance is expected; there are no clear metrics for success; it seems to inspire these strange flurries of last minute (and yet expensive) thoughtlessness; just...no.

Although I do enjoy the part where I get to give cheesy paper valentines to my coworkers. Good times all around.

However, I had the great fortune to have the opportunity to cook a nice dinner for MilkKissed, and rather than buying into the ridiculous, we sat and ate at a table and had a lovely conversation about everything that has been going on since we last saw each other. Frankly, it was one of the best V-days I
have ever had.

That being said, today's thingaday is the dinner that I made:


chicken pounded flat, then formed into a roulade containing fresh sage leaves and a nice smoked fontina, which was cooked with a spicy tomato sauce and served over angel hair pasta. Surprisingly quick to make, very delicious, and overall a rousing success.

Credit where credit is due.

I think the adoxograph has been mildly frustrated with me this month so far because I have had better luck about making and posting about something basically every day so far. Here is the thing: having just returned (triumphant, I might add!) from a visit during which I was given the most excellent opportunity to be her little worker robot, I must say: the adoxograph is more full of making stuff than an entire hive of bees.

I mean, just look at this beautiful tiramisu that she made:


All I did was carry it on my lap and wash some dishes!

And then there are the adorable chocolate mousse cups with the little chocolate hearts:


My photographs quite literally do not do them justice.

In contrast, I just made a grouchy dude from perler beads:


I like him because he looks shifty. He says, "this is not my beautiful house."

Now I just need some spinach.

I made cheese!

Specifically, paneer.

Here's the associated anecdote. I think it was Wednesday, I was talking to my friend, and he said:

"Yeah, I got way too much milk, and I was thinking of giving you some of it."
"Um?"
"Yeah, I have a whole unopened gallon of low-fat milk. Do you want it?"
"...sure? When does it expire?"
"February 12th."
"Um...yeah, okay. I guess I could make cheese out of it."

And so here we find ourselves with a pint of freshly made paneer. It's actually quite tasty, if I do say so myself, and I am looking forward to attempting to make one of my favorite Indian dishes, saag paneer, upon my return from Atlanta. Hopefully the stuff will keep.

This was my favorite part of the process:


I was trying to imagine how I would explain the situation to a police officer.
"Okay young lady, what have you got here?"
"Oh, that's a pair of pantyhose. Full of cheese."
"...?"
"Well, I couldn't find any cheesecloth. and they were on sale!"

Yeah, my life is funny.

Ok, yes, food is kind of cheating

But I even made the marshmallow, and I'm not finished with my crochet thing. Plus, it is so very pink!