angry chicken

new favorite loaf

Here's the oatmeal loaf from that bread book. This is from a few weeks back I think. I forget. Time is moving fast around here. I have decided after confirming with some baking cohorts that the basic bread recipes usually make 2-3 breads, not 4. (Right, guys?) And again, check the errata page for some crucial details.

This is my type of bread because it's nice and heavy—I love all the oaty loveliness with butter and jam. It's the kind of bread that would hurt someone if you threw it at them. It is really better toasted if it's any longer than a day old. I'm sure there's more I should say about it, but that's all for now.

On another food note, my pressure cooker is here and I am anxious to try it out. After reading way too many books from the library in the last week about grains, pressure cookers, beans and all that, and reading all your amazing comments about all this I am even more confident that there is no right way to cook all this stuff, just cook it the best way for you and what you are comfortable with in the kitchen. Lorna Sass, the pressure cooker lady herself, in her more recent vegan cookbook says she just slow bakes all her beans in the oven now, so go figure. She also boils all her grains, like pasta. This is awesome. I just started doing this with brown rice and it's incredible. No measuring and getting water proportions wrong when I make big batches of brown rice to freeze. I have a grudge against rice cookers. I have had 2, they both broke, and are not so good for brown rice anyway. Now that I boil, it doesn't matter, it comes out perfect no matter what.

Oh, and the awesome people who mentioned Rancho Gordo in the comments—thank you. I have beans coming to me now. Excitement!

Okay, totally unrelated, I lost a shoe. Just one shoe. A new shoe. A totally killer Ked and I am so bummed. I actually ordered this pair of shoes twice because the first pair ran big. We think it may have gone out with the newspaper recycling? Not sure. Do sober people lose just one shoe? This will be funny only if I find it later. I keep seeing the found shoe and think it's the lost shoe. "Oh good, I found that shoe!" I yell when I see it, and then start looking for the found shoe, only to realize this one is the found shoe, and the other shoe is still gone. It's making me crazy like a dog chasing its tail. You know when you realize for the first time your parents are a bit nutty, for real? I think I have have crossed the line with this one and the girls are on to me. They are humoring me, I can tell. "Don't worry Mama, your shoe will turn up." they say while reading a book calmly, letting me fuss around looking again. I just need to put the found shoe away. Then when I do find the lost shoe, I will know it's the new found shoe! That's the ticket.

may day

We made a May Day cake last week and paper flowers. It was raining out, so it was more of a paper flower May Day this year. This cake is my fave. It's the Lazy Cake from mailorder # something—I forget (sold out) and you make it in the pan. The one from mailorder is lemon ginger, but this one is orange flavored with a orange glaze. It's just a simple yellow cake with orange rind and a orange glaze with powdered sugar, orange juice and a little melted butter. It reminds me of the hostess orange cupcakes, remember those? Harder to find than the chocolate, but so good. Do they still make them? Okay I guess they didn't and now they still do? Oh, the internet. Don't they look gross? I haven't had on in forever. Anyhoo, this cake does the trick. You can use any yellow cake recipe and add grated orange rind—it flavors the cake so nicely.

Here's a card Sadie made me. Happy May Amy. Oh the pain. It hurts. She is drawing a lot of comics lately. See the thought bubbles there? She draws the people and then draws what the people are thinking about. Amazing. Kids are frikken amazing.

peanut butter chocolate cups

These peanut butter cups were made last week ago or so when I was jonesin' bad for a treat. The recipe is with mailorder #8 (over on the sidebar there to the left) and unfortunately uses ingredients that I have all the time and requires no cooking (well, melting chocolate) so, it's bad news. I wanted to make them smaller—so I busted out the mini-muffin tins.

I think I like them this way better than in the bar shape.

Unrelated, I am researching pressure cookers and pressure cooker cookbooks and information about cooking beans in pressure cookers and pressure cooker/canning type things. I have a stack of books in hold at the library right now. Excitement!

a bean discussion

Here's dinner. I wonder if the girls think everyone takes photos of their dinner. I plan to tell them yes if it comes up. The lentil soup is from Ina (I think I have posted about it before) and the bread is from the book, and is the rye loaf. A new loaf I tried, the oatmeal loaf, I will write about soon, but I need to focus right now on beans. I am trying to keep my posts about 1 or 2 items (except for when I don't) so I can remember what I was going to write about.

Beans. I have been cooking beans on the weekends and am really digging it. I got some e-mails a bit back about soaking. I feel like I change my thoughts on this every time I do it. At first I soaked all my beans in the fridge overnight before I went to bed. Then in the morning I would cook them. The soak was about 8 hours. Then Mr. Rick Bayless mentioned in one of his books that no one in Mexico soaks beans and throwing out the soaking water is lame. (Not his words.) So I stopped too, and since we eat mostly black and pinto beans, this has worked well because they are a bit more sturdy and seem to deal with a long simmer just fine. More importantly, they are still great if they accidentally get overcooked, so I don't stress about it.

When I made a white bean soup however, I did go back to soaking because I didn't want the longer simmer to break up the beans. Some recipes even call for baking them in a casserole to keep them intact. This works well too. I then did a search last night on Chowhound about soaking beans and holly molly. There is a whole lot to say about this (more than 2500 discussions about it) and Rick Bayless's book is mentioned along with 1000s of comments, which leads me to where I have started—I cook them differently depending on how I am going to use them. Of course, lentils you would never even soak, you just throw them in the soup. I find it so comforting that the minutia of my life, like bean soaking, can have more than 2500 discussions somewhere. That's awesome.

I freeze my black beans in smallish quantities (about 2 cups) with a little of their cooking liquid. Then when I need them, I either defrost in the fridge a few hours before, or thaw them in the microwave. I have only frozen black beans because that's what we eat the most of and seem to always need them.

And thank you so much for the merbaby love and the plethora of information about hair rinses!! I want to try the hair rinse tea recipe real bad. I realize now I was using way too much vinegar. After greatly reducing the quantity and adding more essential oil, it's all good. I no longer feel all foody and pickled in the shower. And, for those of you skeptical about this with long hair, my hair is past my shoulders and I have had no tangle issues.

melts for the tub

Here are some bath melts we made last week. They are divine and very oily. I used the chocolate mold from Easter for these, so that's why they look like eggs. The recipe is here. I did find super cheap citric acid at the market attached to Ya Halla on SE Stark Street, thanks for the tip you guys.

I only made about 1/3 of the recipe because I had only a little coco butter. It made about 6 melts, which is perfect because I will want to switch scents by then. They would make amazing gifts, I am sort of shocked at how easy they are and how luxurious they turned out. I need more oils though, which will set me back a little $$.

Baking soda shampoo update:

I have tried it twice now, and since I don't wash my hair very often anyway (I have really dry skin) it's been about a week. It seems fine, but the apple cider vinegar rinse is too stinky. I am really loving my sugar scrub and the nice smelling homemade soap I have in the shower. I add a bit of rosemary essential oil to the baking soda/water paste and it's all smelling great and wonderful—and then I rinse my hair with very diluted apple cider vinegar and wow, the shower just sucks after that. All the nice smelling stuff doesn't matter any more because I feel like I am swimming in easter egg dye or salad dressing. There is absolutely no vinegar smell in my hair afterwards, it's just the application I find so stinky. So, I need to try a different rinse that won't involve vinegar. I love vinegar in food—I am surprised how much I dislike it on my head. I am going to search for a new hair rinse recipe and will report back. Tips?

seriously.

Key Lime Bars. From this book.

The tart key lime was the perfect taste on the only sunny day we have had recently, about 10 days ago. These bars were also amazing because the whipped cream was barely sweetened. Really, they were so easy it was almost criminal. The only thing stopping me from making them more often is juicing 20 key limes.

-I have watched the first 3 episodes of Slings and Arrows and love it so much. I am so happy to have a new show to get into.

-This new header is inspired by my new favorite kids book, Sparkle and Spin: A Book About Words. Amazing.

scrub from the kitchen

The sun came out over the weekend (it's gone now) and the whole town woke up. It was wonderful. More skin was showing on my body than usual (meaning more then my hands and head) so I decided to make a sugar scrub just in case the sun comes out again. It's hiding again for the next 10 days, but you never know.

This is coconut vanilla sugar scrub. I used the recipe here and added what I had in the house—coconut and vanilla extract, not essential oil. I also used mostly canola oil, with a tad of vitamin E oil because that's what I had and my precious olive oil is too foody smelling for me to scrub with. I have a lot of essential oils in the house but I wanted something warm and tropical smelling, so I raided the kitchen. The sugar scrub scent is a bit more alcohol-y with the extracts, but it mellows out in the shower and smells great. I used it this morning and LOVE it! I have pretty dry skin, so it's wonderful for me, but it could be a tad oily for other people, you can adjust the oil amount as needed. Also, different oils coat differently, you know? So an almond oil might be a nice choice.

Now I am all excited to make a ton of stuff from this site. Bath bombs, body butters, you name it. There's a huge amount of them here, and most have reviews, which is sure nice. I was so excited to find this recipe site today because whenever I look for body/bath recipes online, the sites are so weird and crazy —so full of junky ads and pop-up windows, they make my eyes hurt. This site seems very cool, and I didn't even check out all the food recipes—look out!

I picked up some citric acid last night at Wild Oats along with coco butter, and dang citric acid is expensive! I am thinking of Mother's Day gifts here, sorry to ruin the surprise, Moms. I will report back. I also have a bee in my bonnet about not using shampoo anymore (using backing soda and apple cider vinegar instead) and making my own deodorant and toothpaste. As far as I can tell, these all will involve copious amounts of baking soda, which is thankfully much less expensive than citric acid.

random item:

Does anyone have this composter I link to on the sidebar here? The NatureMill? I am so interested. I know I can just put all our food garbage in a hole with worms or whatever, but dang. We compost all the food scraps we can easily—which is a ton, but the weird/non-veggie food goes in the garbage. If we had this thing, we could easily change our garbage pick-up to once a month. I feel bad using electrical power to compost, but it seems so cool! I should read about worms and dirt and holes, but I am a little freaked about rats, to be honest. We should get chickens, they could eat all our food scraps, right? I wonder if I am spreading total mis-information here. Can chickens eat anything? Like lentil soup? Cat food? I need to do some research. Or perhaps a dog? Our dog ate everything. In fact, I don't really want to think about all the things he ate right now. Wow.

**update:

Brown sugar will totally work in this recipe! Thanks for all the compost/chicken info (awesome!) and the citric acid was WAY more at wild oats. I need to high tail it to that grocery. Also, I see there is a tag going around and I am so lame at tags/memes/ and all that, so I pass on them now. I have been tagged 3 times this week, which is totally flattering, but also makes me feel even worse that these things make me feel so impaired. Sorry!

new cookbook excitment

I have had this book, The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories, and Opinions from Public Radio's Award-Winning Food Show for about 2 weeks now and I keep talking about it to anyone who will listen. This usually means Pete.

me: Honey, try this rice, really you have to. . .(me putting a wooden spoon in his face of very hot brown rice while he has other non-compatible food in his mouth) I cooked it a whole new way!

husband: (Taking a very small nibble) Um, okay. . . .it's good?

me: Yes! And, you know what the key is to everything?

husband: Money?

me: No, Fish sauce! Umami!

husband: In the rice?

me: No, salad dressing!

husband: Um, what? Hmmmm. . .wow. (Not listening, feeding the baby.)

me: I seriously can't believe this rice cooking method they talk about. This has changed my life, you know? Amazing! Oh! we need to get the little mesh sink drains at the Asian market, that would change ours lives too. They mention that in the book.

husband: Which book?

me: That new Splendid Table Book, you know, from the radio show?

husband: Right.

later that week-

me: In that book, it has a master salad dressing recipe and then 10 variations! And they also crush garlic with a rock! That is so great.

husband: Which book?

me: That How to Eat Supper Book. And we can now make our own pho!

husband: hmmm

the next day-

me: I think Sadie is a super-taster. They have a test you can do to see if you are, but we need to go to an office supple store to get something for the test. I don't think she'll put it on her tongue, either.

husband: What? Um. . . .what? Did you say super-taster?

me: Yeah, from that new cook book.

husband: Which book?

me: That Lynne Rossetto Kasper book.

Not that he doesn't like food or talking about food—to give him credit, I do have conversations in my head and forget how much I have said out loud, so there is confusion sometimes. Add two loud kids and one crazy baby and the fact that I can never refer to anything, like a cookbook, by the same title. It's a gift of mine.

I will try to describe it-

It's a book for home cooks, even beginners, but it's not too basic. There's a wonderful equipment list, book recommendations, quotes from other chiefs, amazing recipes, advice on navigating ethnic markets, the list goes on—tons and tons of tips, shortcuts, and cool things I had never heard of. It somehow melds Italian, Asian, Indian, & Mexican recipes without it being the kitchen sink. It also has a list of favorite vegetarian cook books, and hooray, most of them are not vegetarian, you know what I mean? My favorite cookbooks save one, are not vegetarian.

I have learned so much from this book already, like a whole new way to cook rice (Seriously!) umami, (So cool!) and I am now using way more raw red onion. (With tips to make it less raw red onion-y.)

It's an intuitive cooking book. That's the deal, and that's how I cook. It describes basic preparations but then suggests many variations. The dishes sound amazing, but honestly, there's so much to read (without it being too text heavy, somehow) I haven't made many recipes from it yet. But I will report back on that.

It's by Lynne Rossetto Kasper from NPR's The Splendid Table, along with her producer Sally Swift (who, after reading this book, am convinced is my cooking doppleganger) and I think this is why the book is so pleasant—it's like their laid back food loving radio show in book form, minus the caller asking how to cook tongue or cow brains. Very nice. I read cookbooks in bed, I'm one on these people, and this is perfect bedtime reading. It's right next to Anna Karenina, a good balance right now.

Actually that's an interesting idea—to read a cookbook along with fiction, especially if it relates somehow. I need to remember this.

family cookbook (with my lemon bars)

Grammie reminded me in the comments of the last post about my lemon bars in our family cookbook. It was compiled and put together by my mom and aunts in 1981. I was 9. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. (I still do.) My mom's side is full of artists, hence the wonderful illustrations and lettering.

You can click on the photos for more detail and to actually read the recipes. When it came together I thought it was the slickest thing ever. A book! Laminated! Bound!  I was so proud I had 2 recipes in it. There are so many recipes in this from people I had never met, my aunts really dug deep in the family tree, so the recipes are from all over, including in-law's families from the Midwest. . .

Here's my lemon bars.

And here's a random page. My god, Dandelion Wine?! I don't flip the pages of this book often enough. This blows my mind, my grandma and great grandma right here on this page. The girls are so lucky to have this book. I have been making the same things from it for years. Our family Christmas Braid bread is from here and my great aunt Mickey's Jello Salad is in here, too which I don't make, but am so happy it's documented here, cause dang—it was so freaky!

I would love to make a new family cookbook. I know my Aunt has started compiling recipes for a second one. If I make one, I will have everyone write the recipes on 3 x 5 cards—to preserve their handwriting. You can make cookbooks all fancy now on various sites and all that (Blurb and some other one I forget) but the typed out ones like this, or scanned recipe cards with handwriting would be so wonderful. I need to try my lemon bar recipe again. This one from the 8 year old me.

squares of lemon flavored goodness

These lemon squares (from this book) were made last week and while they were good, the crust was not 100% perfect. A little cardboard-y and not the melt-in-your-mouth crumbly short bread texture I prefer in a lemon bar.

To make the crust layer you grate frozen butter with flour and powdered sugar, so that was fun. The girls liked it. My favorite all time lemon bar recipe is here and it's so good that I shouldn't deviate because nothing can compare, but these were very tasty anyway. After they cool, before cutting, I always refrigerate bar cookies—the potentially gooey ones. I use parchment paper now to line the pan, and then cut while chilled semi-firm. I cut the edges off, too. They are yummy to nibble on and make the squares look just perfect. Since my newly instated parchment paper policy with all bar cookies, cakes and brownies, life in the kitchen had been much more rated G, not R, which is good for the whole family.