When Husband moved to Winnipeg for graduate school in 1978 he was immediately captivated by the rye bread from the City Bakery, a venerable institution that made wonderful baked goods. City Bakery rye had just the right texture for Husband, neither mushy nor hard, with an open but fine grain. He has spent the last 47 years trying to replicate it.
For all the years of our courtship and marriage I have watched him try scores of different rye bread recipes. Some sour dough, some not, some with dried yeast, some with fresh yeast, some with caraway, some with no herbs, some successful, some true disasters. They have been baked in a variety of pans. Last weekend he declared that he had finally found the last rye bread recipe, which he made yesterday. He also declared that he would throw out seven rye bread recipes and keep seven rye bread recipes.
We shall see how long this lasts, and when I shall have to see him fuss over some new rye recipe. It is hard to be a perfectionist.
What is your favorite bread? What have you tried to emulate or perfect?
You know my drill. Find an interesting cookbook out and about. Get that cookbook from the library. Try out a few of the recipes. If they turn out well, consider adding cookbook to the collection. And the hard part, getting rid of a cookbook to make room for the newbie.
So yesterday I’m made a Roasted Tomato, Potato, Dill and Feta Frittata from a cookbook of tomato recipes. I like to follow recipes fairly closely when I’m testing a cookbook; I think of it as giving the author a chance to really show their stuff. After a couple of paragraphs in the recipe, I came upon this phrase – “… heat a generous glug of oil over medium heat”.
To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen “glug” listed as a measurement in a cookbook before. I was pretty sure a glug has to do with the sound of the oil if you tip the bottle all the way up and the oil makes a glugging sound as it pushes its way out. But for fun, I looked it up. Internet says “about two tablespoons”. So is a generous glug three tablespoons? Four tablespoons would be two glugs, wouldn’t it? Not exactly a precision measurement.
What I didn’t say is that when I read that instruction, I laughed out loud. The reason for that is that in an earlier recipe, the author explained in excruciating detail how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.
“Arrange the cheese on one slide of bread, then put the two slices together. Set a skillet that’s the right size for you bread (too large, and you’ll end up with burned butter), add about 1 Tablespoon butter, swirl it around to coat the skillet; as soon as it stops foaming, lay your sandwich in the skillet.”
To be fair, the grilled cheese recipe turned out great but not because I needed step-by-step instruction on how to grill a cheese sandwich but because it called for a Sun-Dried Tomato & Smoky Red Pepper Mayonnaise which was fabulous.
Glug, pinch, dash, handful…. how closely do you follow recipes? Do you even USE recipes?
Although I probably won’t go down again to boil sap, I truly enjoyed the experience. Part of it was learning all about the process, but a lot was also the ambiance. Not in any particular order…
The weather was just about perfect. It started about bright and sunny (I put on sunscreen) and even when it clouded up in the afternoon, the temperature seemed just right for boiling. Not cold enough that you really felt it but not warm enough that the work made us sweat. There was a short rain shower after dark, but when it cleared up, the stars in the night sky were amazing. As a city gal, I never see stars like that.
Before dinner we had tea but instead of plain old boiling water, we used the boiling sap. Very sweet tea but wonderful drinking it outside.
There was good company while we were working. Astrid is a big dog with a big deep bark but a big softie; after dark we heard coyotes and while Astrid worked hard to convince us that she was a guard dog, she didn’t move more than 20 feet from us. Whiskey looks like a cat, but he is really a dog. He comes when he is called, hangs around most of the day for petting and doesn’t seem to think the rain matters at all.
My godson doesn’t actually “farm” but is embracing country lifestyle. He was happy to tell me about all the classes he has taken at the local folk school (bee keeping, chain saw safety, how to “manage” chickens, syrup making and to show me all the improvements he’s made to the house and outbuildings. He has some animals: chickens and a mean rooster (I have bruises to prove it) and also a small herd of goats. He has just acquired a male, so perhaps there will be kids and milk in the future. I shared with him the wonderful soaps that Barb made when she had goats.
He is also a terrific cook and by the time he went in to make dinner, I had a handle on the boiling so didn’t need to panic. Several of the borscht ingredients come from their garden and it was delicious. Just soup and toasted baguettes. Yummy.
Children. He has three kids – 7, 5 and 3. I got to play Legos with the youngest. Lots of racing “vehicles” and crashing. The 5-year old was obsessed with arithmetic so we did a ton of “what is ten plus ten” and other combinations. He hasn’t worked on subtraction yet, so we did some “what is three minus two”, using fingers. There was a very lively conversation after the 7-year old got home from school concerning the weight of the earth and how you would weigh it. He’s got a lot on the ball for seven and there was gravity walls/barriers and gravity robot discussion. My godson brought up the planet-building spheres from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to which I replied that the weight of the earth is clearly 42. The 7-year old didn’t get this joke but god son did!
It was just a wonderful trip, even if you don’t count the maple syrup (and a bonus small bottle of their black walnut syrup which I’ve had before and it fabulous). I can’t imagine how it could have been better!
When was the last time you just really enjoyed something?
I spent a few days down at the farm of my godson last week; he invited me down to see his process for making maple syrup. The past few years I’ve been the recipient of his syrup and have asked quite a few questions. He thought I would like to see you it’s done – he was correct.
We started at 6:45 a.m. by getting the fire pit going. He does his boiling out in the open – no hut or roof or anything. You have to watch the weather forecast carefully when you do it this way. The three pans fit right over the edges and we filled them about 2/3 full of sap. With the 10 gallons that we harvested that day, we were working with 60 gallons total.
After about 5 hours, the farthest two pans started to darken as the water in the sap boiled off; the closest pan, due to being near the opening for adding wood, didn’t boil quite as vigorously. We spent a far amount of time transferring from this pan into the darker pans. That way we only added cold sap to the closest pan. It takes quite some time to boil down 60 gallons of sap so we were still at it into the night. The fire kept us warm as the temperature started to drop and it rained (lightly) for about 40 minutes.
When we had it all boiled down to about 3 gallons, we closed up shop and moved the syrup into the kitchen, where it sat overnight. There was about an hour more of boiling on the stovetop the next morning. There was quite a bit of fiddling with it, using a hydrometer to make sure it was the right density. Not dense enough and the syrup can develop mold, too dense and the syrup crystallizes. At that point we had about 2½ gallons and we filtered it through a very heavy duty filter that was hung from a camera tripod; why purchase something when the camera tripod works wonders?
Then all that was left was to get the syrup into bottles. Although I had worked hard the day before, the bottling was the only thing I really helped with all morning. It was really a one-person operation once it moved inside.
Seems like a LOT of work (16 hours on Friday and 4 hours on Saturday) for the amount of syrup we got but I will say that the ½ cup that was left over after bottling, that we all ate with spoons was probably the best syrup I’ve had in my life. See the bottle with the green cap in the photo above, that is a little larger than the other bottles? That’s the one I claimed.
I looked up at the television yesterday to see a bit of a cooking show in which famous folks (mostly chefs) weigh in on their favorites. This particular dish was some kind of dumpling and there was a close up shot of somebody’s hand using chopsticks to pick up the dumpling. I know enough about this kind of stuff to know that the chances that it was the hand of the particular chef were nil. Most likely a hand model. Yes, there are such things although I’m wondering if there is a subgenre of the hand modeling subgenre for chopsticks use.
When I was in college, my freshman year roommate was from Japan – Yoshiko. We had a pretty good year. She bought a wonderful stereo half way through and she also taught me to use chopsticks and food that you eat with chopsticks. There was no Chinese/Korean/Thai/Japanese food in my house growing up. In fact, the first time I had any Chinse food in my life was that year in college.
These days, we have a ton of chopsticks at our house. For many years, every time I found chopsticks on sale or that were interesting, I’d pick them up. At last count, there are about 70. And the sad thing is that I’m the only one who uses them. When YA was little, I bought a set of cheater chopsticks but she wasn’t very interested and as she got older, she absolutely refused. Occasionally if I serve Chinese, a guest may attempt them but usually they eventually fall back onto forks and spoons.
I’m not sure why I like chopsticks so much – I use them sometimes even if it’s a food you wouldn’t associate with them.
Do you own chopsticks? Do you have a favorite dish to go with them?
Over the years I’ve tried a lot of different food plans. Whenever I hear of someone talking about how good they feel on some particular diet, I get curious. I’ve even tried raw a couple of times; the second time I lasted the longest – four days. Tried the zone for a bit. The Mediterranean is pretty close to our regular habit, although as vegetarians, we pass on the occasional fish/meat.
The keto diet was the one that I toyed with for quite some time before giving it a shot. I have two good friends who swear by it. I loaded up on a few keto carb substitutes and I made it three weeks. But I didn’t feel better. In fact if you factor in how much I was thinking about carbs, dreaming about carbs, crying about carbs, I was much worse.
So it probably won’t surprise anybody that every now and then I let my delight in carbs get the better of me. Every month or so YA asks if Great Harvest is making Derby Cookies; they are her favorites. She is also very fond of the various cheese breads that Great Harvest makes. When she looked at the March newsletter, she was happy that the Derby cookies were on the docket as well as the gouda garlic bread. Since she was traveling and I was in party prep, I made the bakery run on Saturday (that’s when they do the gouda bread). I thought that ordering ahead would help, but it didn’t. In addition to YA’s bread and cookies, I left the bakery with a White Cinnamon Chip loaf and an Apple Caramel loaf (mostly apple, not much caramel – a perfect ration for me).
This is a lot of bread, even for me. YA will take care of the gouda and probably most of the cookies. Guess I’ll just have to suffer through my two loaves. Sigh.
Anything that occasionally just makes you lose control?
Most people probably don’t feel this way, but all the prep going into a big party is actually a gift to myself. The confluence of making lists, organizing, cooking and then being with the people of my life makes a big party a perfect experience for me. I’m pretty sure that if there was such a thing as a glow-meter, I’d be off the scales during my gatherings.
I often get asked what guests should bring to one of my parties. If you’ve done this, you’ve gotten my standard answers. “Bring yourself.” “Bring your appetite.” Occasionally I will tell someone if they have a particular beverage that they can’t live without, they might bring that.
It’s a testament to how our society has changed that everyone goes under the assumption that every party is potluck and you have to pony up. A friend who has never been able to come to my Pi Day festivities (but has always stopped by the next day for tea and leftovers) showed up with a strawberry rhubarb pie. She was a little worried and left it sitting on the dining room buffet but it was just fine and I put it out. But it is a bit like bringing coals to Newcastle when you bring pie to my Pi Day. LOL.
Folks brought flowers (all of which are doing nicely and safe from the cat) and, of course, wine. My people do seem to be wine people. Lots of empties into the recycling after the party was over!
And for those who aren’t local or couldn’t make it, here is a list of this year’s pies: Blueberry, Dutch Apple, Peaches & Cream, Macadamia Coconut Caramel, Crack, Chocolate Chip/PB Whoopies, Banofi, Pear Croustade, Key Lime and Butterfinger Cream. Oh, and let’s not forget the Strawberry Rhubarb!
Do you have a go-to dish that you take to potlucks?
With YA out of town, I’m in my “eat what’s here and don’t shop” mode. I actually enjoy this part of YA traveling. (Not as crazy about being in charge of Guinevere’s early morning and late night trips outside, but I’ll live.)
This week there have been quite a few leftovers in the fridge – more than usual. Since I also worry about food going bad, I decided that I would have dinner for breakfast. I’ve done breakfast for dinner many times in my life but except for a handful of cold pizza starts to a day, I’ve never actually heated up what I think of as dinner food and had it as the first meal in the morning.
I heated up some rice with carrots and parsnips and had it alongside some brie and applesauce. It was very nice and now I’m thinking I should switch things up more often. The only hitch was the feeling that I needed dessert afterwards!
Do you have any foods that you wouldn’t normally eat for breakfast?
When I find something I really like at a restaurant, it’s really really hard for me to choose something else the next time. Even if it looks good. Black Coffee & Waffle in St. Paul has several waffle options that look wonderful to me. As I’m driving over there I’m thinking to myself that I should try something new (besides the almond butter, fresh fruit & granola waffle) and then I never do. Same with the olive pimento veggie burger at The Tipsy Steer. In what I consider a personal victory, on Sunday I actually got the crumb cake at Black Walnut Bakery. I’ve looked at it several times but always end up ordering the bear claw, which Black Walnut makes with puff pastry, pastry cream and raspberry jam. The crumb cake also had raspberry and was wonderful, but if I’m honest, I also bought a bear claw (just in case) and had it yesterday!
Quirk #2
Most of my adult life, I’ve done without a dishwasher. Either I just didn’t have one or for many many years in my current house, it just didn’t work. Now that we have a nice dishwasher that YA insisted on when we had the kitchen remodeled, I end up putting the clean dishes away about 80% of the time. It’s not a horrible job – only takes about 5 minutes, but I’m finding that afterwards, I resist putting any dirty dishes in for a bit. As if it needs to sit empty for a day or so before I start loading it up again. Like it needs to rest and recharge? Maybe it needs a spa day?
These days I rarely stop at coffee shops. Mostly I’m just too cheap when I can make my own coffee or tea at home for a fraction of the cost. But every couple of months, YA and I will make a stop at a Caribou if we are out and about.
In early days, when there was a Caribou two blocks from house, I will admit I was more of a regular. But in keeping with my “like it cheaper” gene, I purchased myself a mug that I could use whenever I stopped by. Saved a bit of money and saved yet another coffee cup in the trash. Even though this mug is close to 25 years old, it’s in pristine shape – it doesn’t get used that often and I wash it by hand instead of throwing it in the dishwasher. When we lost our little Caribou (first the big Lyndale closing and then the Minnehaha Creek bridge re-build), my use of my mug plummeted.
When I dragged it out to the car with me yesterday, it was probably the first time in a year that it had gotten any use. The young man behind the counter was astonished to see it. He picked it up, turned it around, looked at the bottom then called over co-workers to look at it. The big draw turned out to be the logo, which apparently was “updated” back in 2010. If you had asked me, I would not have been able to tell you what the new logo looks like:
Guess I’m just oblivious. But it turned out OK… they were all so enamored of my antique mug that they gave me my decaf for free!
Do you have a favorite cup/mug for your coffee or tea?
