Outside the airport, it smells like ribs.
It’s 55 and rainy here today.
The hotel is downtown but overlooks a lake named after a First Lady.
They have chips and pimiento cheese on the room service menu!
Where am I?
Category Archives: Food
New Horizons in Baking
Earlier this week, Husband started to muse about the next thing he wanted to learn to bake. He makes all sorts of rye breads and sourdough breads, and he just made Julekage for for first time. He decided that he was ready to try his hand at Nordic flatbreads, crispbreads, and crackers.
That, of course, means purchasing a new Swedish rolling pin with little knobs all over it, and ammonium carbonate or Hartshorn, aka Baker’s Ammonia, a rather smelly leavening agent. (I guess the odor dissipates as the crackers bake.) The Nordic Baking book we consulted was very clear that out grooved lefse rolling pin just wouldn’t do, and that Hartshorn or Bakers Ammonia was essential to crispy crackers.
What have you mastered? What are you trying to perfect? Do you make your own crackers or flatbread?
Idle Curiosity
I mentioned in a comment on the Trail on Saturday that I was enjoying some Veuve Clicquot champagne, and that led to some research on my part that I found fascinating.
I noticed on the bottle a portrait of a woman. I don’t speak French, so I looked up the name and found it meant “The Widow Clicquot”. I went on to find that in 1805, at the age of 27, this woman inherited a champagne vineyard and business upon the death of her husband, and was the only woman to run a champagne house. Her father-in-law insisted that she do an apprenticeship in champagne production, and she went on to be wildly successful. She invented a method of champagne production that is still in use today. She was the first to make Rose champagne. She was a friend of Napoleon, yet she made a point of smuggling champagne into Russia. Here is part of the Wikipedia entry for her:
On 21 July 1810, Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin launched her own company: “Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin”.
Barbe-Nicole exported the vast majority of her champagne out of France. Unfortunately, she was facing naval blockades that kept her from sending her wine abroad. Furthermore, Czar Alexander I banned French products.
Facing bankruptcy, Barbe-Nicole took a business gamble: she decided to send her champagne to Russia, when peace returned ahead of her competitors. While the war’s naval blockades paralyzed commercial shipping, Madame Clicquot and Louis Bohne secretly planned to sneak a boat through the blockade to Russia.
With the French monarchy restored, Madame Clicquot and Louis Bohne put the plan they had been preparing for five years into execution. In 1814, as the blockades fell away, the company chartered a Dutch cargo ship, the “Zes Gebroeders”, en route to Königsberg,[6] to deliver 10,550 bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne to the Russian market, taking advantage of the general chaos, while their competitors still believed such a move to be impossible. The boat left Le Havre on June 6, 1814. Meanwhile, Russia had lifted the ban on importing French products. The whole shipment was quickly sold. A few weeks later, another ship left Rouen laden with 12,780 bottles of champagne destined for St. Petersburg, which were sold out as soon as they arrived. When the champagne reached St.Petersburg, Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich of Russia, Czar Alexander I’s brother, declared that Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin champagne would be the only kind he would drink. Word of his preference spread throughout the Russian court.[11
During the years that followed, Russia continued to buy Veuve Clicquot wines. Sales rocketed: from 43,000 bottles in 1816, they climbed to 280,000 in 1821 and increased until the 1870s. Within two years, the widow Clicquot had become famous and was at the helm of an internationally renowned commercial business.
I just love looking up stuff like this. It makes me no richer, but it makes life interesting. Research is sort of like finding out the juicy gossip about neighbors, but it is less damaging and hurtful.
What do you like to find out about? What were you doing when you were 27?
Special Diets
Photo credit: Dana Tentis
The last couple of days we’ve been dealing with some upset doggie tummies. Not sure of the cause but both are on a special tummy diet – pumpkin, sweet potatoes, rice, little bit of brown gravy. Both seem to like it and appear to be on the road to recovery.
What foods do you like when you’re feeling under the weather?
Chinese New Year
Happy Year of the Rat!
When I adopted YA from China, there was an enormous amount of support for the new family I was creating. There were adoption magazines, online forums and a very active local chapter of Families with Children from China. You know me, I dived right in, learning about traditional holidays in China as well as taking part in gatherings with other adoptive families and even subscribing to two adoptive magazines. We even traveled to Illinois once to go to an adoptive family conference when YA was 3.
I dropped the magazines early on; they were really depressing, overwhelmingly focused on all the negative aspects of adoption and very few of the joys. Then when YA was about five and I was signing us up for another “culture camp” (these were annual weekends), she said “Do we have to go? They’re boring.” So that was the end of culture camps and big FCC gatherings.
When she was in middle school I was informed that the Chinese delicacies that I had taught myself to cook for CNY weren’t that great. Could we just have take-out instead? Okey dokey.
Then when she was in high school and I was in a whirlwind of cleaning before Chinese New Year (it’s traditional to really clean the house before CNY so the kitchen god and goddess give a good report on your household to the emperor of heaven), she said “You know, I don’t really care about this, so if you’re doing it for me, you don’t have to.”
So here I am, several years later, still caring about this holiday that I embraced when she was a child. I still have little figurines of the kitchen god and goddess; I still try to get the house spiffed up before the new year and I still have a my best friend and her hubby over for a nice take out dinner to celebrate the new year. I don’t put out a lot of decorations, although there are a few things I’ll put out. I had a toilet tank topper made from some fun Asian-designed fabric last year, so that’s a must and a great dragon flag for the front of the house. I do make a few CNY cards. YA just rolls her eyes.
What will you be up to while I’m celebrating the Year of the Rat?
Death of a Salesman
Photo credit: Tomas Fano
There’s yet more news about the upcoming death of Mr. Peanut. The Planters folks, apparently in an effort to top last year’s Super Bowl ad, looked at how other fictional characters are mourned. They liken Mr. Peanut’s death to Iron Man’s death in Avengers: Endgame, since the leggy legume will also sacrifice himself for others. Iron’s Man’s demise was met with an outpouring of social media activity and the Planters team encourages fans to “tune in to Mr. Peanut’s funeral during the third quarter of the Super Bowl to celebrate his life.”
I like Planters as much as the next person but I’m having trouble imaging myself emoting over the peanut mascot. I will admit I was a little bummed about Iron Man in Endgame; he was, after all, my favorite character in the Avenger universe. But certainly not enough to go to an Avenger funeral or send any sympathy cards. I can only hope that Mr. Peanut’s death brings as much social clamor as the company wishes for.
Personally I’d prefer to keep Mr. Peanut and dump Limo Emu.
Do you have a favorite mascot? Least favorite?
Burrowing
I’ve just had one of my favorite kinds of weekends. No social engagements, no particular errands, no particular chores. Started out with snowblowing early Saturday morning so that YA could get to work; although it’s technically a chore and it was cold, I had fun using my new snowblower (well, new to me anyway) even though it was a little hard to get it started the first time it was still dark and I had to kinda figure out by touch where the choke and throttle were. Did my Saturday morning chores (change sheets, water plants) and by then it was all of 7:30. So except for taking breaks to throw more laundry in and have meals, I spent the entire day in my studio! I’ve had a pile of stuff that I wanted to use up for a few weeks and I managed to get through it all.
Yesterday I had to snowblow out the bottom of my driveway again and when I lent the snowblower to my neighbor for a bit, I got to learn about cotter pins. Glad he broke it and not me – I would never have known what had happened and would probably have spent a lot of bucks having somebody diagnose and fix it. YA convinced me we should out for breakfast – The Lowbrow – her favorite breakfast spot. When we got home I made a big pot of broccoli cheese soup and then headed back to my studio. Overall I made 41 cards this weekend and got the studio spruced up as well.
My friend Pat calls this kind of behavior “burrowing” and I have to admit I did feel like I had hunkered down in my sweatpants and fat socks. I do enjoy my busier weekends as well, but it did feel rather nice to tune out the world for a couple of days.
What do you like to do when you’re “burrowing”?
Weddings and Rice
As I was walking out of the co-op the other day, I looked down to see a large splotch of rice in the parking lot. The kind of splotch that can only be achieved by having your bag of rice break open while you’re carrying it to the car (you can guess why I know this). My first thought was that the local birds would be happy but then I remembered that supposedly uncooked rice is bad for birds, which is why they throw birdseed now at weddings.
Then when I got home, I discovered that YA had received TWO “save-the-date” cards.
Wedding reminder #3 was when I was watching Cake Boss that night and one of the bakers (sorry I don’t watch this enough to know any of their names) was celebrating a milestone anniversary with a big party and a wedding cake. When the couple began to cut the cake and feed each other, I cringed, hoping they wouldn’t smash the cake into each other’s faces. I detest that.
So all these wedding reminders in one day made me think about weddings how the traditions have changed over the years. My first wedding, which was completely orchestrated by my mother, was fairly traditional. Church, gown, reception, cake (unsmashed), lots of people I didn’t know. My second wedding was the exact opposite, we met the judge at Good Earth restaurant and were married at the table with our server, Philip and the server from the next section, Sarah, as our witnesses. Honeymoon at Day tons that afternoon. I am much more fond of my Good Earth wedding memories than my traditional ones so it makes me wonder why so many brides and bridegrooms adhere so stickily to all the “musts” when getting married. Why not do something different, stretch their boundaries, find things that are meaningful instead of just traditional. Those of you with psychology degrees, any ideas?
If you were planning your wedding today, how would you like it to go? (Like all good fantasies, money is no object.)
Good Fortune
Fortune cookies, while a fun novelty, don’t always register for me. Most of the time that YA and I have Chinese food, it is at home, delivered by our favorite place, Fresh Wok. YA loves cream cheese wontons, which I consider dessert; this combined with the fact that the fortune cookies are always at the bottom of the bag, they are usually overlooked until after we’re full.
I have some good friends who are moving this week, so this past weekend, I took Chinese take-out over to them so they would have one night when they didn’t have to cook. I decided to make it an early Chinese New Year party so brought lucky money envelopes, red paper plates/cups, the works. When I was setting things out, the fortune cookies were actually on the top of the bag so I put them each of our place settings.
Here is what mine said:
“Because of your melodic nature, the moonlight never misses an appointment.”
Lovely, although in terms of it being a fortune, all I can figure is I’d better keep being melodic or the moonlight will miss an appointment?
What fortune would YOU like to crack open?
I Like What I Like
In 2019 YA and her boyfriend discovered Roti, a Mediterranean fast food place that opened in late 2018 in Edina. It’s a lot like Chipotle, where you choose your base, then your protein, then your add-ons as you go down the line. Since I rarely go out to eat for lunch (and when I do, I never go far), I didn’t even know it existed until YA suggested that I should include Roti on the list of possible giftcards that Santa could put in her stocking.
It turns out to be fairly close to my office so I went to help Santa with his list a bit before the holidays. In getting a giftcard for YA and one for BF, I qualified for a $5 off card for myself. Since I had to run an errand yesterday that took me close to Southdale, I decided it would be a good time to try Roti and get a good deal in the bargain. Since I hate to stand around trying to figure out how the menu works in a new place (with impatient folks behind me), I decided to look on line before heating over. The menu described how the process works and all the options, including a yummy looking flat bread pizza with hummus, veggies and feta cheese. Right up my alley.
Imagine my surprise when I got to Roti and the veggie flatbread pizza wasn’t listed on the menu board. When I asked about it, a couple of employees looked at me like I had frogs crawling out of my ears. The manager piped up and said that it had been discontinued. Obviously not in the hour since I had seen it online, but I had a feeling that sentiment wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Instead I did what works best in these situations; I stood there looking up silently and forlornly at the menu board. Eventually the manager said “but we can go ahead and make one for you anyway” and proceeded to confirm what I wanted on the flatbread. (All of the ingredients were right there, but I figured that commenting on why they would discontinue something that they clearly could easily make would not help.)
While I was waiting, it occurred to me that I have a couple of favorites at other places that have been discontinued and I still ask for them. Jamba Juice will still make me an Orange Appeal and Davanni’s will still do their Four Cheese Hot Hoagie for me if I ask. I assume most people just let these things go and order off the menu, but I don’t always want to try something new. I just want what I want.
Faced with new options are you adventuresome or do you like what you like?
Trail Baboon 