kids in the kitchen

I'll admit, I can be skittish about kids in my kitchen. There are so many sharp items and so many places that heat up. And when I'm working on a meal, there are also generally about five hundred other things going on at the same time; it's hard to concentrate in chaos, and even harder to concentrate when the chaos is "helping." But with three meals for eight people to prepare everyday, I have happily relinquished lunchtime to the ten year-old.

She brought five cookbooks home from the library last night. Annabel Karmel's "Mom and Me Cookbook" made its debut today. Since I was juggling two babies all morning, the ten year-old assumed the role of Mom, with a five year-old assiting as the Me. They pulled off guacamole, drinks, and even pizza (complete with yeast dough from scratch -- I kid you not).

The food was fantastic, with the pizza being crowned the favorite homemade version ever.

The muffins, however, had a little trouble. I thought that was only fair. I mean two-out-of-three is a thoroughly respectable showing for one's first time running a kitchen, don't you think?

the art of leftovers

I've never really attempted food photography. Food presentation has never been my strong point - my energy goes into making it taste good, not necessarily look good.

But please give this concoction the benefit of the doubt.

Year after year when I make pumpkin pies, I can never quite squeeze all the pumpkin pie filling I've prepared into a pie. But of course there isn't enough to make another pie, so, at a loss as to any alternative, I regretfully pour it down the drain. This year I saved it just in case I felt ambitious enough to make mini pumpkin pies with the children.

I did not.

So on Sunday as I was poking through the fridge for Thanksgiving leftovers, I decided to try concocting a "leftover pie" pie. I had about a half a cup of leftover fresh cranberries from the cranberry apple pie in addition to about a cup more or less of pumpkin pie filling. I had no desire to rain down chaos on my kitchen by making a pie crust, so here is what I did.

Mix together about:

1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
2 Tbsp. melted butter
2 Tbsp. brown sugar

Press this down in the bottom of a pie dish. Pour the leftover pumpkin pie filling over this. Mix the fresh cranberries with a tablespoon or two of brown sugar, then pour these into the pumpkin pie filling. Add some chocolate chips (1/4 cup?) as well. Bake at 375 until the pie filling is set (I think I baked this for about 25 or 30 minutes). Let cool completely.

This turned out as a tasty, almost cookie/bar-like treat (a gluten-free thanksgiving pie, if you will). Not overly sweet, it was perfect for a breakfast indulgence the next morning. And I didn't feel guilty at all, knowing I had made use of my thanksgiving pie leftovers that were otherwise bound for the garbage disposal.

Don't forget to check out the Etsy Shop sale going on now!

1 day off school

+

5 extra pairs of hands

+

12 bags of apples

=

4 quarts of apple pie filling

+

24 quarts of applesauce ("are we just going to eat applesauce all winter, mom?")

+

2 rounds of dried apples

And also a whole lot of this.

Today I'm cleaning sticky floors and reading a book. And eating applesauce. Naturally.

into october

I unboxed all the quart jars this week. For an entire year they sat huddled in a corner of the basement, empty and (I'm quite sure) thoroughly depressed. A whole year without homemade jam or applesauce; months and months without bottled peaches. I ask you, what is a box of jars without peaches? Oh, how I missed those peaches last winter.

So I unboxed the jars on wednesday and hauled the girls to the home of a friend-of-a-friend. Her apple trees were being cut down, and she was looking for a loving home to send the year's harvest. For the first time in my life, I picked apples at a stoop rather than a stretch. But considering I had three young girls along for the picking, ground level access was a decided boon. Less romantic, to be sure, but much more effective.

All day thursday I made applesauce (with my "helpful" little boy reaching for the knife at every turn -- how does he always know just where the knife is when he can't see onto the counter?!?). Friday I passed and then turned back to a farm stand selling local peaches and tomatoes, and just like that a busy saturday became much busier. Tomato sauce, bottled peaches, apple butter, and peach jam, all in the name of a tasty winter.

Saturday evening our round of fall birthday celebrations belatedly began, complete with requisite piñata in the neighborhood tree.

Happy birthday my boys. Consider the peaches an extra gift.

fishy business

I like to explain my lack of appreciation for fish cuisine by describing the landlocked foothills whereupon I grew up. No sea, no decent seafood, you see. But the fact is that all of my siblings grew up right alongside me on those arid mountains, and most of them love fish. Also, what about trout? The mountain streams and valley lakes were teaming with them. Blaming geography is something of a smokescreen; I don't know where the dislike originated, but I turned my nose to fish almost from the time I could smack fishy lips.

Twenty years after leaving home I'm trying to make amends. All eight of us could use more of the good stuff in fish. Aside from a little tuna here and there, some strawberry-flavored-cod-liver-oil and the random fishy crackers, we've been fish-free too long. But no more.

I've been reading about food quite a lot the past few years ("please don't get her talking about food," my husband says. Ahhh, but you're too late love. I'm already four paragraphs in). I've been reading about fish and thinking about fish and finally decided it was time to cook some and serve it up. So I asked around. Everyone said to go with salmon for an inaugural run.

Even in dim light with a dark plate, I'm sure you can still see just how delicious this salmon looked. Honestly. Even to me. And I'm pleased (and slightly stunned) to report that very nearly the entire family decided it tasted delicious as well. Only the fourteen year-old didn't want seconds. Unbelievable.

So now that we've made it past the novice level with flying colors, the question becomes --

What fish comes next after salmon? And how soon until I let the little girls bring home something with the eyeball still attached? They've been begging, but for the sake of the hesitant older kids -- and my husband -- I have demurred. And also, what is the best way to cook fish? Our neighbors moved and gifted us their grill, which seems like a good fish cooking kind of a place . . .

a meditation on canning

I have decided that I really need some open shelving in the kitchen. I don't have decorative dishes or a teapot collection to prop up, but I do have jars of pretty food that just seem a crying shame to hide away in the basement.

During our last few years in Indiana, the boys and I worked every wednesday morning at a local CSA, coming home loaded down with overflowing baskets and bags of produce. We ate it raw and sautéed and smoothied and baked, and we spent all day thursday stuffing what was left into jars. Every batch went straight from stovetop to cooling rack to the recesses of the storage closet. And while I knew I had put up dozens of jars, glancing around the kitchen you would never have guessed they were there.

At the end of the canning run our last year in Indiana, my husband wanted to see the goods all together in the open. He dug through the closet and brought out every jar. By the time he got to the early strawberry jam the entire dinner table was filled. The effect was amazing. Such a sense of abundance and accomplishment, such a stunning array of color and shape. Modern art at its finest; old-school at the roots.

And all of a sudden all I wanted to do was line the walls with an evolving series of brass-capped jars.

We moved to Colorado a year ago this week, six days after the baby was born. Needless to say, I didn't do much at the CSA that summer, and I didn't put up any jars to haul across the country. For the first time in a decade we spent a winter with store-bought jam. No homemade pickles, no bottled peaches, no pomegranate jelly.

And no open shelf exploding with color.

But this summer the garden is coming up and the farmer's markets are stocked. I put up the first batch of early strawberry jam last month. Time to look for some shelving.

What do you think? Would you decorate with pickled beets and applesauce? And is there a store jam out there remotely acceptable to a homemade-addicted palate? It's going to take awhile to rebuild my stock . . .

goodbye, old friend

My mixer died today. Just shy of its sixteenth birthday.

In the long run this was probably for the best; the poor thing has been on a slow downward spiral for years. First the gears began to go, leaving only two of eight speeds to pick from. Then the lock button stopped locking. The wire whisk bent, the plastic coating on the paddle began to peel, and the bowl wobbled. Even the pin that holds the head onto the neck stopped holding, sliding further and further out with each whip of the kneading hook. Every other day or so I had to ping the pin back in with a hammer. The poor thing was in sorry shape. But still, it's hard to let go.

Sure, we had some rough times. Like that one time, only a few months after arriving on our doorstep with the rest of our wedding gifts, the mixer was knocked off the counter by "someone" (still as yet unfingered) leaving the speed button twisted at a profoundly askew angle. It was poorly packed and hauled across country not once, but twice. It's been scrubbed and splattered, banged and dragged, and on more than one occasion blamed for something that simply was not its fault.

And then, of course, there is the issue of the bread.

This is the standard Stand Kitchenaid mixer, you see, for light household work only. Not the beefier Artisan Series, and definitely not recommended for heavy bread use. And yet here we were, nearly sixteen years and literally thousands of loaves later, and somehow I just assumed it would keep chugging along forever.

Which makes it all the more poetic that a batch of bread was what finally did it in. Today's mixing and kneading went off without any sign of distress. Afterward I lifted the head, detached the hook, scraped down the sides, and twisted off the bowl, setting the nicely formed ball of dough in the sun to rise. Later when I was cleaning off the stove my elbow bumped the Go lever and nothing Went. No whir, no sputter, no cry of pain. Just an long immobile silence.

One last batch, and a peaceful passage to the other side.

In the end that was probably the way it had always hoped to go.

going sour

The best bread I have ever tasted was an intense, earthy, heavy, whole wheat sourdough. We had some of it the first night we arrived in France, now more than twelve years ago. In one of those convoluted multi-faceted twists of fate, we had arrived in Angers for a school-year stay and were picked up at the train station by the the father-in-law of the son of an acquaintance of my husband's grandparents. (See? convoluted). The man took us to his home to stay while we looked for a place of our own, and at the first meal we were greeted with a bread that was so heavy every knife seemed dull trying to saw through it. So heavy my teeth hurt to bite into it. So heavy I felt full for hours. So heavy, really, that I felt like I'd died and gone to culinary heaven.

In the years since, I've gotten the recipe from his son (now my brother-in-law -- see? the convoluted and lovely turns fate takes) a number of times, but never managed the courage to try it. I mean, just say it out loud: Sourdough Starter -- doesn't that sound scary? and hard?

But after my unexpected baguette success, I decided to finally give sourdough a try. And here's the thing -- it turns out that sourdough starter is actually no big deal. At all. A little water, a little flour, five minutes a day for a week or so, and there you have it.

I made both the starter and the bread from recipes in Local Breads, opting for a very mild tang to begin with. (Did you know "sourdough" can actually be sweet? Only certain types of starter actually have that tangy sour that store bought sourdough tends to have). The first batch didn't have a lot of lift to it, what with a young starter and all. But I was so excited to see it actually staying roundish in the oven that I took a picture of the loaf through my very (very very very) dirty oven door as it cooked.

And the ultimate test -- how does it taste?

According to six-out-of-the-seven members of our family currently ingesting solid foods, Spectacular. The six year-old would rather have something with "less wheat, a softer crust, and some sweet in it." I guess you really can't please all of the people all of the time.

in love some more

It's been more than a decade since we lived in France, and all these years I've been in clinical baguette withdrawal. There is just nothing like a fresh baguette. I know there are places in the States where a good baguette can be had, but somehow I have never come across one of them. I've tried local bakeries, grocery stores, bake-at-home frozen numbers, but to no avail. Every baguette recipe I've made has come out, well, about like the rest of the bread I make (which isn't to say it's not yummy -- but the crust is just . . . wrong. You know?) Once in a great while, a restaurant bread has come close, but our restaurant outings are few and far between. I need something more consistent. Like, twice a week, say.

Last fall I picked up a book at the library (Local Breads, to be exact) that seemed promising, and started reading. I know people who are cookbook readers, but it has never really made much sense to me. I am confused no longer. The next day I ordered a copy from Amazon.

This book is a gem -- cover to cover. I felt like I had just unearthed the baking rosetta stone. Unfortunately, a move and a baby interrupted my reading (I was still deep in the pre-recipe portion of the book) and six months later it was the fourteen year-old who pulled the book off the counter, dog-eared the "Parisian Daily Bread," and began begging. Two days later, a real, honest to goodness french baguette popped right out of my very own oven.

Seriously.

See?

Spongy on the inside, chewy crunchy on the outside. And the taste? Oh my. Suffice it to say that the three loaves this recipe makes were gone in about two minutes.

So while this is not a quick bread (it takes about 3 hours, start to finish, but you only have to spend about five minutes of each hour actually doing anything -- the rest of the time the dough is just rising in various incarnations: ball, folded rectangle, loaf), it is well worth the effort. If you're going to be in the house one day, and plan to wander through the kitchen a couple of times, try this bread.

Seriously.

[If you can't get your hands on the book, here is another recipe that is close enough to be tightly related.]

free-form

For the majority of my adult life I have clung to the security of the tried and true. I never strayed from established recipes and sewing patterns. I practically used a paint by numbers approach when it came to art. And so I consider my recent foray into sewing without patterns and cooking without recipes quite an accomplishment. Sewing without the constraints of a pattern has been delightful. Cooking without guidance hasn't been quite as successful - maybe since it coincided with my most recent pregnancy. Funny how avocados, grapefruit, chicken and rice could sound divine to me, and yet even my adventurous husband couldn't bring himself to finish his first helping. After a few similar episodes, my confidence is a bit deflated.

Perhaps that is why I have found such satisfaction in making free-form artisan bread. Though I use a recipe, it is still liberating to let the loaf rise and bake without the constraints of a pan. My willingness to relinquish control is what allows the variability and interest of the end result.
A worthy lesson to remember in all my creative pursuits.