From Your Wayward Blogger

Here we are, Mr. & Mrs. Windansea and Daughters

In case you were wondering where I've been for several months, I've been right here, but with so many family obligations and other complications that I haven't been able to sit down and write. Since last we spoke:

Senior Recognition for National Charity League, May 2010

• My mother fell and broke a vertebra (she's better from that now, thanks)
• Anna graduated, was presented at National Charity League, and subsequently double-pierced her ears and streaked her hair blue
• Mary graduated from 6th grade
• I gained ten pounds from all the celebrations and lack of time at the gym (but not to worry, I'm peeling those off one sun salutation at a time and will be back to fighting weight soon)

I remember when blue hair meant you were elderly....

Now we're dealing with something else altogether. In life, there are ups and downs, and thank goodness things in my life tend to balance out - when something goes to hell in a handbasket, something else is usually doing pretty well. Right now, I'm very happy that both my older daughters will be at the same college next year. Anna is going to CU Boulder as a Fine Art major, and Fiona has transferred there from Bennington because she changed her major to geology, and it just made more sense. I love Boulder, so I'm really happy I'll get to visit them in such a great place with the added bonus of a short, direct flight. And they'll have breaks at the same time - it's a miracle!

The handbasket contains my mom's health. This week we received a confirmed diagnosis of lymphoma, and she will be starting chemo in a few days. They think it's one of the indolent kinds of NHL that may have been laying low for quite a while, but it's now reared its ugly head and is causing all kinds of problems. She's 88 but she's in pretty good shape so we're very encouraged by the prognosis, but still. Cancer sucks.

My mom with Fiona, May 2010. We all hope to look this good at 88!

I've bowed out of several of my community obligations to make room in the schedule for my mom's treatment, and this last week I went through a lot of my yarn and knitting projects to get everything organized for the waiting rooms. I've got all sorts of stuff to photograph for you, so stay tuned for that.

As always, thanks for the well wishes, my internet friends. I know you're out there, and I appreciate you all.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Thumbprints for Us Big Guys

I know, they look like little fried eggs, no? They're actually delicious, melt-in-your-mouth hazelnut cookies with lemon curd filling without one bit of egginess - they don't even have egg in the dough! These were the TWD pick for this week from Mike of Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude, and they came in very handy because I volunteered to provide baked goods for someone on Monday morning and then promptly forgot and went out of town instead. Sunday afternoon found me watching the Oscars and scraping the skins off hazelnuts whilst discovering I was out of raspberry jam.



It was lucky that I almost always have raw hazelnuts in the pantry for just such emergencies and I always have lots of lemons, so at least I could bake something - and with all those lemons, lemon curd it was. The recipe made about five dozen cookies and I sent four dozen off to make other people happy. The remaining two dozen stayed behind to make my husband happy, which I think he deserves at least once a week so it's a good thing there's TWD.



Back to the Oscars. By the time all was said and done, I'd managed to watch just a couple more of the nominees, but even so, it was so much more interesting because I knew what the hoopla was about. I now have a Netflix queue full of even more movies and last night I watched the nominated animated shorts, because they always look so interesting to me. I loved La Dama y La Muerte and Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty. And if you're interested, there was a link online to Logorama, the winner, here. Logorama turned out to be not at all what I was expecting.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Toasted-Coconut Custard Tart

Sometimes a hectic schedule pays off. Between fighting a cold all week and dealing with everyday life, by yesterday evening it was looking like I wasn't going to have time to make a tart this week. My solution was to make only half of the TWD recipe for Toasted-Coconut Custard Tart - the custard half. I was going to just make coconut custard and be done with it, but in reading over the recipe I had a brilliant idea: Didn't this recipe look a lot like an ice cream base? Leaving out the corn starch, I let the custard cool overnight in the fridge and then popped it into my ice cream maker this afternoon, making THE best coconut ice cream, which I strongly considered not telling my family about so I could eat it all myself. They don't always get around to reading the blog for days, so hey, that's what they get.

So while my ice cream was getting a little harder in the freezer, I set off to run errands this afternoon before picking Anna up and heading over to Whole Foods for our dinner ingredients. I think I've probably mentioned that I spend half my life driving and the other half waiting for someone, right? And that I hate driving, and that I get bored easily? Because of this, I always keep a good selection of audiobooks on hand at all times along with a bit of portable knitting. There I sat, waiting for Anna, knitting and listening to Outlander via the car stereo, when she finally arrived and I turned the key in the ignition. Click. You know that sound? The sound of no battery? It sucks. Thank goodness I have Triple A and the guy was there within 15 minutes to give me a jump, but it was just enough aggravation to make me order pizza for dinner.

And here's the upside to that little aggravation: Because I wasn't making dinner, I had time to bake shortbread instead. I made a very basic recipe and added a little coconut extract and let it bake while I waited for Mr. Pizza Guy to get to my house, and then I served my family a very nice little dessert. We all loved it, but two of us liked the shortbread best and two of us liked the ice cream best. The ice cream was really good - the rum and the cardamom gave it a wonderful perfume and the toasted coconut rounded out the flavor of what was basically a rich vanilla custard - fantastic.

I like coconut a lot; in fact, I order cases of coconut water from Amazon (didja know you could do that?) and drink it after I work out instead of one of the many sports drinks that line the grocery aisles. It's very refreshing. I make a pretty darn good coconut cake, too, universally loved by all who taste it, even the coco-haters. There was no way I was going to miss this week's TWD entirely, that's for sure, and I'm glad I gave it a whirl. Thank you Beryl of Cinemon Girl for this week's pick. One day I may even try it as a tart!

New Camera

These mushrooms came in my CSA bag this week.

This post is just to see how my new camera is behaving. I decided to get one of those little Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot jobbies so I will never again miss a photo op (friends, you've been forewarned). My big camera, a Canon eos Digital Rebel, is fantastic and has a big ol' flash and a couple of lenses, but it's heavy and kind of a pain to take out easily. My iphone is pretty great in a pinch, but there's no flash. I thought the Coolpix S570 might be a good compromise: it has a rechargeable battery and built-in flash, and when you turn it off it collapses the lens into no space at all. And the price is right. Here are a couple of photos I took right after I turned it on for the first time. Not bad....

Does it look like an olive in the middle of this banana bread? It's actually a chopped-up date!

Tuesdays with Dorie - Honey Wheat Cookies

On the heels of being completely grossed out by my discovery of chicken rings, I just finished watching Food Inc. and reading both In Defense of Food and Food Rules. While In Defense of Food reinforced my belief that my grandparents' diet (along with their lifestyle - i.e., walking a lot, socializing while eating, and generally maintaining a much more relaxed attitude in regard to just about everything) helped them live long, healthy lives, it also gave me a nice dose of additional stress to pile onto the normal everyday paranoia that seeps into virtually every one of my life choices. For example, bread. I now feel like I must plant ancestral grains and somehow harvest, thresh and grind them myself, little red hen-wise, before I can eat a sandwich. (It goes without saying that I will also have to figure out how to raise a pig, plan for its humane demise, and cure a ham from its eventual parts in La Jolla . Good luck with that.)

Anyway, that's all pretty ambitious. I do try to buy whole ingredients and cook a lot, and we eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, and I've been getting a CSA bag for the last month or so. This week I even bought some whole wheat flour to try to integrate more of that into my biiiiiiiiggggg weakness: homebaked anything. I love bread, pastries, cakes, etc., and I love them with real sugar, butter, and white flour. I don't think I'll ever be one of those people who can sub applesauce for butter and sugar, but I'm trying to use honey a little more (Yes, I know it's still sugar, but at least it's closer to its natural state than the white stuff.) and I'm backing off on using highly refined staples period. This week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick by Flour Child was the recipe for Honey Wheat Cookies, so that fit in nicely with my plan.

There's still sugar and white flour in these cookies, but I subbed in half whole-wheat flour, and the recipe calls for honey in place of some of the sugar. The dough has to be refrigerated for a couple of hours and then you roll it in wheat germ before baking. The result is a subtly-flavored honey-lemon-toasty deliciousness that is perfect with a cup of tea. I loved these cookies. John said they were only okay but he did eat 10 of them, so I'm not sure you should listen.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

What can I say? I'm late for TWD again this week! I actually made the dough for these cookies a week and a half ago, baked off one batch, froze the rest, baked off another batch last night and only managed to get one grainy iPhone photo of the finished product. These cookies are the leftovers that my niece is taking to school for a friend's birthday - cute, no? I used Scharffenberger 60% chopped up for the chips and left out the nuts; they were pretty good! Kait of Kait's Plate chose the recipe - thank you!

Oscar Nominees!

A few years back John and I were invited to an Academy Awards-themed party at someone's house where we all got a ballot and got to choose our picks for for the Oscar winners, with a prize going to the couple who predicted the most. Now, I know some people have date nights and get out to the movies on a regular basis, but John and I have never gotten our acts together enough to organize actual dates, even when we were dating. We came in dead last because that year we'd managed to see exactly two movies on that entire list. One of them was Shrek 2, and the other one was some action movie that John had seen (Spiderman 2? Mission Impossible 3? I can't remember.) that was up for best lighting or something. Our huddled conversation: "Oh, well did they have good lighting in that movie?" "I can't remember the lighting. There were explosions."

So a few days ago I realized that I've actually seen a record-breaking number of movies this year (For me. Record-breaking for me.) . I have actually seen three - that's right, three! - of the best pic nominees! I've seen Avatar, Up in the Air, and Inglorious Basterds. I've also seen Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Julie and Julia. That's right, biatches, I've seen SIX Oscar nominees! I am that damn proud of myself.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Cocoa Nana Bread

After a couple of weeks' hiatus from TWD we're back with this week's entry, a quickbread using chocolate and bananas as the main components. I love bananas and eat one probably every day, but John is allergic - he can't even touch a banana. A few people on the TWD boards said they were substituting either Greek yogurt or sour cream for the bananas, so that's what I did; I used a cup of sour cream in place of the two bananas called for in the recipe. As a further disclaimer, I believe I undercooked it somewhat because, as usual, I was baking late at night and I just had to go to bed regardless of whether my bread was ready!

After cooling and cutting, I decided it looked pretty dense and needed something to lighten it up, so I thought of whipped cream. Because really, what can't be improved by adding whipped cream? I defy you to name one thing, unless it's something that could be improved by adding bacon fat. Go on. I'll wait over here while you think about it, my non-vegan friends.

Anyway. I took the bread to my seasonal care-package-for-our-college-girls group where it was very well received, and the whipped cream was an excellent call. Thank you for this week's entry, Steph of Obsessed with Baking!

Geek Knitting

Baby booties, several pairs for homeless teen moms. Cascade superwash, various patterns.

Let's all cheer for a bit of knitting content on my supposedly knitting-centric blog! First, while you peruse some of my ongoing knitting (the tiniest tip of the WIP iceberg, my friends!), a link to some geeky knitting. You know, if my husband wasn't such a big guy I would seriously contemplate knitting him a periodic table sweater, just so I could watch him walk out the door every morning and say, "Wait, you forgot YOUR SWEATER!"

Then there's this one. I read a caption for this photo somewhere that called it the world's biggest bully magnet. Luckily nobody in my house is Mario obsessed so I don't have to commit that particular act of intarsia. And since I wrote this post a couple of days ago there are now a lot of other gaming sweaters making the bloggy rounds if you want to see more. (Edited to add: a Tetris blanket!!!)

In other knitting news, I helped someone cast off yesterday. Fellow knitters, do you remember those days? It's the scariest thing for non-knitters. The cast-on isn't such a big deal - you don't have too much time invested. But after slogging through miles of garter stitch rectangular knitting, screwing it up at the end is an overwhelming prospect.

Get Ziggy - the back. Not too Ziggy yet.

Imagine what it was like before you could go here! Seriously, my non-knitting friends, I'm happy to cast on and bind off (and pick up dropped stitches, or tell you why you suddenly have more stitches, or how a hole appeared out of nowhere, or whatever) for you as many times as you'd like. But some of you have expressed embarrassment at having to ask more than once...go to that link. Or go ahead and bring it by - you know I wouldn't tease you if I didn't love you.

Haiti Relief

All politics aside, if you're wondering what you can do to help the people of Haiti, go to the Clinton Foundation website, where there are links that enable you to choose from MANY different organizations that are working on relief. You can also donate $10 immediately to the Red Cross by texting "HAITI" to 90999, or through the Clinton Foundation by texting "HAITI" to 20222. In either case, $10 will be billed to your cell phone and given to relief efforts.

The Collapse of Western Civilization

This is where we jumped the shark, right here. I don't care how much omega-3 it has - there is no part of a chicken shaped like this. Or at least, no part I'm willing to put in my mouth.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Apple Tarte Tatin

In the spirit of Julia "Never Apologize" Child, I'm just going to pretend my Apple Tarte Tatin is flattened ice cream topping and call it a day.

PS It would have to be the one I had to take pictures of.

PPS It still tastes divine.

PPPS Next time, don't overthink the flipping.

Happy anniversary, Tuesdays with Dorie and thank you for choosing this week's Apple Tarte Tatin - practically perfect in every way.

Holiday Baking

Cardamom Crescents

Here it is, 2010, the Monday after the holiday break. There was so much baking, cooking, knitting, wrapping, decking, and general revelry that I completely forgot to post my Tuesdays with Dorie entry for last week (chocolate cheesecake, which I even baked two weeks ahead because I knew I'd get entangled in the day-to-day) and I haven't taken pictures of any of my knitting.

Hazelnut Shortbread Sticks

There were holiday concerts to go to, dinners to host, trees to trim, and movies to watch, and we topped the break off with a trip to see the snow yesterday (more on that to come). Fiona was home so of course we had to see New Moon (a thinly-disguised excuse for a bunch of baby men to take their shirts off, if you ask me) but we also saw Avatar and Up in the Air, both of which were excellent. Plus how amazing is George Clooney? He even manages to be cute in Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Coconut-Orange Snowballs

Snoopy turned three on New Year's Day, and even though we didn't throw him a party he marked the day himself by accidentally falling into the pool, which was exciting because he hates the water and completely overreacted and then dried himself off by running under bushes which necessitated a trip to the doggy spa and a second dunking. He's so small, and loves being inside so much, that it was the first time he'd ever gotten dirty with actually dirt.

Sablés

Anyway, I thought I'd wrap this post up with a few pictures of my holiday baking. The cookies, well, you've gotta have Christmas cookies. In addition to the sablés, molasses ginger, and chocolate crinkles I've made before, I tried three new recipes as well: coconut, hazelnut shortbread sticks (these were voted the best) and cardamom crescents. I probably won't make the coconut ones again, and although we all liked the cardamom ones, the hazelnut ones were so amazing I'll stick with those.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

For dessert after Christmas dinner, I made flourless chocolate cake with warm caramel sauce and a French pear tart so people could choose chocolate or fruit. (Or both. I'm looking at you, Self.) This was the first time I ever made frangipane...so good. The tart proved to be very popular so I will definitely make that again next year and the chocolate cake is a recipe I make often because it's fast and delicious.

French Pear Tart

And just in case you think we didn't have enough sweets, the leftover caramel sauce became the topping for homemade ice cream on New Year's Eve, forever spoiling me for caramel out of a jar. Happy 2010!

Molasses-Ginger Chewies

Tuesdays with Dorie - Café Volcano Cookies

I was all set to skip this week of TWD because - let's face it - I think we're all busy, and while there is the opportunity to share creations both knitted and baked with those we love, we're also going to parties and shopping and taking finals and applying to college around here and it's all just too much sometimes! Plus three people in my extended family exhibit unmitigated gall by having their birthdays in December.



There's also the whole nut allergy thing here. John's got to be careful with nuts because, while we aren't quite sure exactly which ones he's allergic to (Understandably enough he doesn't want to do a taste-test to find out.), many of them are processed with peanut oil so they're out no matter what. The result is that I mostly leave the nuts out of stuff - I don't miss them too much and nobody swells up with hives that way. This week's cookies are 90% nut, so leaving them out was not an option. At the last minute I decided to whip them out because they are just so easy to make. I was so glad I did - they're easy, yes, but they're also really good. My family was over on Sunday and they loved them. I'm not sure I'll make them again because there are a million great recipes out there, but once more, Dorie's recipe didn't disappoint.




Thanks MacDuff of The Lonely Sidecar for choosing Café Volcano Cookies!

CSA Box

Specialty Produce recently started offering CSA boxes once a week. You can opt in via email, which is great because I have commitment phobia when it comes to things like this - I already struggle with a weekly milk/dairy delivery that makes me guilty every time I can't quite finish the milk in any given week.

This is my first week, and I was so pleased with the contents of the box. In addition to the pretty vegetables you see here (heirloom lettuce and tomotoes, baby pink turnips. baby carrots, a leek, some thyme, a fennel bulb, asparagus, arugula, a squash - all locally grown and absolutely beautiful) there were also a couple of nice Meyer lemons and some Satsumas (which I don't really need because I've got a bumper crop of them myself). The interesting twist is that you suddenly find yourself in the position of having to cook something you normally don't buy, forcing you to be creative in your menu planning.

Last night I roasted a pork loin and accompanied it with roasted baby turnips & carrots that I dressed with just a little olive oil, kosher salt, and thyme - fresh, simple and delicious, and the carrots actually tasted like carrots. I also took the greens off the turnips and sauteed them in a bit of bacon fat (from what John calls my little jar of happiness). Dinner was so good I think it actually brought a tear to my husband's eye.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Sablés

Okay, I know I say this about a lot of things, but these are my favorite Christmas cookies of all. They're buttery and rich, yet delicate and finely textured. I can't help it if I have a long list of favorite things. Don't even get me started on brown paper packages tied up with string.

In a rare instance of perfect timing during this crazy holiday season, Dorie Greenspan's sablés were the TWD pick for this week just when I had to provide cookies for an open house at the La Jolla Historical Society. And in addition to being timely and delicious, they come together in a snap and you can keep the dough in the fridge or freezer to slice and bake whenever you need a few.



Last Christmas I made them several times because they disappeared quickly, and at Easter I made a batch using pink sugar instead of the pretty yellow you see here. I've also tried making them with red and green sugar, but the yellow is my favorite. It plays up the golden buttery flavor of the cookie, I think. Thanks Bungalow Barbara for giving me an excuse to make yet another one of my favorites!

Tuesdays with Dorie - Rosy Poached Pear and Pistachio Tart

File this under better late than never...I just now finished assembling this tart at 9:30 pm on Tuesday while John was putting the lights on our Christmas trees alone (That's right, trees, plural. It's excessive, but you know how I am.). I almost thought of skipping this week but I love pears and I love pistachios so I had to give it a whirl despite the fact that I still have pie left over from Thanksgiving and I'm finally back to my normal weight after I gained a whopping five pounds in one day last week. It's my super power, gaining weight that fast.



The tart requires a few steps that have to be done in advance, i.e. poaching pears in a beautiful red wine bath, making the pistachio pastry creme (which bore an unfortunate resemblance to my minty hummus - but it's under those gorgeous pears, so who cares?), caramelizing more pistachios and blind baking a tart crust (which I made this morning). While the crust baked I reduced the poaching liquid as Dorie suggests and sliced up the pears in preparation for the assembly.



Given all those steps, you have to ask yourself if it's worth it. Well, it is. It is worth every bit of effort and dirty dish - that's how good this is. And it's impressive as all get-out in person. Go make one for any of the special occasions you have this month. I'd give you a slice of mine but I haven't figured out how to share with you all quite yet.



Thank you, Lauren of I'll Eat You, for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie entry - it was fantastic!

Here Comes the Sun

Back in September I had some kind of flu that had me down for several days and I really haven't felt right since. I've been kind of tired and a little achy all over, but I kept attributing it to my sporadic workout schedule, since I've been traveling (where all I did was walk but no yoga or anything else) and then coming back and hitting classes to make up for it.

Last week I went for my yearly checkup and all was great except for one thing: my Vitamin D levels. Now, the one thing I try to be really good about is applying sunscreen and mainly staying out of the sun. Living here it's easy to get too much and while I'm trying to avoid getting skin cancer my real fear is of turning into Godzilla. Turns out all that sunscreen can actually be too much of a good thing...unless there's some other crazy reason for it, I'm not getting enough Vit D from our friendly UV source.

Vitamin D deficiency can make you achy and sore, depressed (SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder), lead to bone loss, osteoporosis, diabetes, give you insomnia (which I already have in spades), etc. Basically a big list of all the things I'm trying to prevent with all the stuff I am doing. Now I'm taking a supplement every day for six months and making an effort to get my Vitamin D the natural way, too. The natural way is better, I think. And after I sunbathe a little I can knit a little.

The Pi Are Squared shawl I was working so diligently on turned out to have a major flaw, all because I don't follow directions. I was periodically doubling ALL the stitches between the diagonal increases instead of just the middle stitches. I'm not sure if it speaks to my idiocy that I thought that was right for as long as I did or to my brilliance that I realized that made no sense, geometrically speaking. Anyway, I frogged the whole damned thing. It was cursed, and I do know better than to work against the curse. I started from scratch instead.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies

I was finally able to get a couple of photos of these cookies after baking off three previous batches on other days - that's how much my family liked them. I made the dough a couple of weeks ago, doubling it as a go-to in case any cookie emergencies might arise this month. Little did I know that the emergency would be keeping up with the demand.

The dough is super sticky and it spreads like crazy in the oven, but the resulting cookies are simultaneously crisp and chewy, with a very interesting note added by the black pepper in the recipe. We tried them rolled in raw sugar and also in regular cane sugar, and I think the cane sugar held up better. We also tried them after refrigerating the dough, which made it easier to handle, and after freezing, which was easier still since I made logs and just slice-and-baked.

Despite rave reviews on the taste, I'm not sure I'll make these again. I didn't like handling the dough and I didn't like how much they spread - you can't get that many cookies on a sheet. Instead, I might add a little pepper to another ginger/molasses cookie recipe and see how that goes.

Thank you Pam of Cookies with Boys (Make sure to go look at her cookies - they are perfect.) for suggesting this recipe. This is the second sweet TWD recipe in the last couple of months that called for black pepper - fantastic taste, and a great way to expand the palate!

Temptation on a Plate

WARNING. The contents of this post may be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. If you are susceptible to the aroma of fresh donuts, frying dough, sugar puffs of warm sweetness, or anything of the like, you have been warned. Don't come crying to me about your potential episode of excess, abuse, or waistline expansion - blame this guy.

It turns out you can take a can of ordinary pop-n-fresh biscuit dough and turn it into fresh donuts in a maneuver that is so easy it's scary. Ordinarily, I wouldn't even consider making donuts. (I'm not from the South; I'm from So Cal - we don't deep-fry, we stir-fry.) And I wouldn't buy biscuits in a can anymore, either. (I'm not from the South; I'm from So Cal - but I do like mixing me up a batch of some of them biscuits.)



But then one morning I was perusing my bloglines and I came across this little video at the Amateur Gourmet where they were talking about how easy it is to make donuts, and I was thinking, "Yeaaaah, once I'm making yeasted dough it's not going into donuts," when bam - they showed the instant donut method and it made me get in the car and go buy a can of biscuits.

The next morning I poured canola oil into the bottom of a pot, heated it up to 325F and punched holes out of the individual biscuits. A couple of minutes later, we had fresh, hot, light, and crispy donuts (and their holes) for breakfast. They fried up easily, were not greasy at all, and they were delicious - so delicious that I might actually make them again using the real yeasted dough - but these were really good for being so incredibly easy. As a bonus, check out the relatively small mess:

FYI, we decided that the ones coated in regular sugar were better than the powdered sugar ones.