Baking frenzy

Yesterday was a day of baking from the old standby — Fannie Farmer.
From a French style honey bread….

to prepping French vanilla ice cream with a bit of lavender in the milk… which was churned today (Monday) by the Gardener.
And then I made meringues (because honestly, what else should I do with that many egg whites, but not enough for an angelfood cake?).
The house smells delicious. And I’m not sure how many times I’ve washed the bowls.

I’m in the middle of a delightful book, called Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart. In 1945, two young girls from the University of Iowa hop a train for NYC, and manage to be the first women to work on the shop floor. The book is bound in Tiffany blue, and although it’s not a recent printing, it’s a great deal of fun. Airy, a bit like my meringues. (Fun and frivolous — unlike the gravitas of recent news headlines, talking with family about recent storms in the heartland, etc. )

Sounds of discord, caramel edition

Unset caramel (that has cunningly set up at the top of the pan so that it is firm to the touch), when the pan is flipped over onto a sheet of wax paper the next morning at oh-gawd-o’clock:
“Glub glub glub glubbity glub…”
Me, “oh… feck. Not before my morning coffee!”

Caramels of discord

When running a fever, that is NOT the time to pick a recipe from the Joy of Cooking and start merrily making chocolate caramels. I got to use my double boiler, I found my candy thermometer, and used up some corn syrup leftover from last year’s holiday baking. I doggedly tried to get the mix to make it up to the desired 242-degree temperature, with no luck. After 3 hours of coddling along the water in the base of the double boiler, I think I just made a pan of caramel sauce. (It’s really good on challa bread, and I have some apple slices to try tomorrow, if it hasn’t set.)

Home Ec goddess I am not.

Finished Cakes and Ale. It’s worth reading, even if only for revisiting the paths that male authors continue to wear down with their footsteps — the selfless woman who loves sex and doesn’t worry about the Victorian moralities around her, the cattiness of other women, and the men who are changed (made older and wiser, made fools) by the acts of the selfless woman. I am grateful that I will never be able to meet any of the people in the book.

Fluctuations in pressure

Life is always filled with some sort of pressure. The drive to get work done, the physical crush of crowds at a festival…. And then there are lazy Sundays in the summer which should be more relaxed.

Today, because it’s been really cool for summer, I thought, “I will bake a cake. That will be relaxing…”  So, to the tune of the Gardener mowing the lawn, I slowly wash eggs and crack them one by one into the bowl. Until I get to number 5, when the water pressure dies, shoots air, then suddenly all of the city’s water pressure shoots the egg out of my hand, out of the sink, and onto the floor.

Splat.

Much bad language and cleaning.* And then I put a small bowl under the spigot to get water to wash another egg. The cake is in the oven. I am hiding away from the kitchen, stuck with a David Bowie/Queen song going through my head (wonderful for highway driving, but not so much for incorporating flour).

I’m going back to my knitting. At least I can frog errors without egg on the floor. Honestly, there are worse things than water pressure fluctuations. Earlier in the week there was no water at all.

On the left is the Honeycomb vest. I’m a few inches away from decreasing for the arms. Yes, it’s still the back.

*The cats were no help cleaning up the egg. The only one to show up probably wanted me to rub the runny egg on his head. Ewww.

Shopping for Cooks

… or people who love to bake. No, I’m not saying go out and buy yourself a chef, attractive though that may sound. But if you know someone whose hobby* is baking bread, icing cakes, or making blue ribbon chili, you might be able to find something they want and need on this list:

• Measuring cups, cookie cutters, and a cookbook for children might be a hit with the ‘tween or teen set. (The ‘tween book is a link to an article about Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls, a cookbook I had as a kid.)
• If you’re on a budget, find 12 family recipes, and copy them over for a younger member of the family, or perhaps for your new son or daughter-in-law. Include nonperishable ingredients for one of the recipes. (I once received a ham strata recipe, with one of the ingredients, a canned ham, packed in a casserole dish. It was perfect on New Year’s morning.)
• Think grilling. In southern areas of the U.S. and in other areas of the world, December is the perfect time to stick things on the coals. Tools–like a new meat thermometer, specialty racks for grilling fish, new tongs and cleaning brush–might be appreciated, even if it’s months before grilling season.
• Check out other cultures for cookbooks. There are beautiful cookbooks out there for Thai, Japanese, Indian, Southwest Native American, Italian, vegetarian, and many other types of cuisines. If there’s a gap on a cookbook shelf, it might be time to spice the library up with new cultures and recipes.
• Funny (and useful) presents include measuring cups in fun colors, fanciful oven gloves, exotic tiles for hot plates, and aprons that express someone’s individuality.
• If they’re taking lessons in cake decorating, find a fancy cake pedestal and server for them to use. If they’re on a bread baking kick, specialty pans for baguettes or corn muffins might be a hit.
• If you know someone collects something like carnival glass or Royal Doulton teacups, hit the thrift stores to see if you can’t make a find.

Have fun in the cooking shops. And some advice, garnered after an unfruitful shopping expedition — if you’re running a fever and shopping at the same time, just go home. Standing in the music aisles listening to the clash of Metallica and “The Little Drummer Boy” while looking at CDs of opera was disorienting, to say the least.

If you have other ideas of things that might please the person who relaxes in the kitchen, comment away! I’m still staring blankly at store shelves, trying to suss out my next purchases.

*Note I’m saying hobby here. There are some people who bake all the time, are always in the kitchen scrubbing up, or who work in a kitchen. They might like something else that’s less like work, you know? If cooking is like ironing for some people, don’t give ‘em a reason to scowl, and select something else. But if you shop for those who are eager to learn new cooking tricks, who seem to read cookbooks like they’re novels, who confess they’ve always wanted to know how to bake bread… get thee to a store like Fantes, where I used to daydream for hours, or your local kitchen wares shop.

Two More Gifts

… and I can mail out packages.

One of the great things about my friends and family is they love books. An easy trip to a bookstore with a coffee shop attached; I get to look at some of the current books and music that are out; and the wrapping is a snap.

If you’re shopping for books, here are a few ideas (depending on the personalities of recipients, of course):

• For the kids: Bats at the Library — it’s a lovely, illustrated, imaginative book that’s a wee bit meta (see how many characters from other books you can identify in each picture). Check it out at your library, and see if it would work for a boy or girl (or grownup) you know. Another great book is Arabel’s Raven for preschoolers.
• For the preteens: Mistress Masham’s Repose. I loved this book when I was a preteen. Another book by TH White, The Goshawk, is good too.  I remember The House With a Clock in its Walls as one of the books that gave me fits when I was 11, but might be just the cup of tea of a brave preteen boy or girl. If you want adventure with fewer sleepless nights, try Aiken’s Midnight Is a Place.
• More for preteens: All of a Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor, and The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright. The first is about an immigrant family living on the Upper East side in NYC in 1912 (please ignore the phrase “heart-warming story”… as a kid I was fascinated about the different time period). The second is about a family of kids who pool their money each week so one person can go do something they’ve always dreamed about.
• Teens have the Twilight books, but there are also classics like Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (yes, I cried while reading the last page in a library),  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (more hankies), and Gothic classics — Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, including Fall of the House of Usher, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre or Villette, and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (which is a spoof of the genre).
• Adults might appreciate books filled with: Christmas carols, recipes, diy crafts (if you know a craft they enjoy), stories about nature, or vacation ideas.

Note: when I was a student, I was able to find lots of out of print books that I knew people would like at a second-hand store. Sometimes an older book is better because it’s a collector’s item or has illustrations the recipient would remember.

Hoping your season is jolly, and you manage to survive with your spirits intact.

Lessons Learned

1. Jalapeno oils and smoke burn — if you’re sauteeing a red jalapeno, do not breathe in the smoke from the pan to see if it’s getting near done. I think if I end up roasting/charring the rest of the jalapenos for storage in the freezer, I will need to invest in a little breathing mask and goggles.
2. A lesson for the people working on my car — when I take it back to the shop to fix the new tire you just put on it a month ago (it went flat before I had driven 30 miles), do NOT call me to see if you can upsell your lovely fuel injection cleaning service that you did a month ago. I am so not impressed.
3. I’m impressed by the savvy investments the HVAC people tried to make (more confidence in playing the market than I have ever had). I’m learning a lot as 3 guys sweat out working on my house and discussing ways they can draw out portions of their 401Ks to save their houses, if the downturn means they don’t get as many jobs. We ALL have the same fears and frustrations. It’s what motivations we find from these hurdles that matters.

So, the jalapeno went into chili last night. My car should be done soon. There’s no tidy financial sum up, sadly, for me to offer anyone. But I guess that’s where everyone is right about now.

To any Canadian — my calendar says to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. May there be pecans to put on your sweet potato casserole or lovely food of your choice.

Grown Up Chocolate Fudge

… inspired by the back of an EAGLE BRAND (R) container of nonfat sweetened condensed milk. I wanted something less sweet and a little more sophisticated, and came up with this:

In a heavy saucepot, mix

• 1 can of nonfat sweetened condensed milk

with

• 2-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 2 blocks of Baker’s unsweetened chocolate, chopped up (should be around 1/2 cup)

Melt over low heat. When milk and chocolate are totally blended together, turn off heat and add

• 1-1/2 teaspoon of Pear William (Kirschwasser might work as well)

• 1/2 cup chopped dried cherries (not maraschino)

• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Spread mix in a wax-paper lined 9-inch pan. Put in refrigerator for an hour, until set, then slice into small squares.

This makes an insane amount of fudge for a small household. However, fudge freezes well in freezer bags, and each piece defrosts in around 2 minutes. Little bit of trivia: the original purpose of all those little tins of condensed milk was to help provide safe milk for troops during the Civil War. (Elsie becomes the best known spokes cow in 1960.)

The original recipe is here on the www.eaglebrand.com site. None of this is safe for people who can’t have sugar, alas. Any people with diabetes are outta luck when it comes to fudge, it seems. The milk being fat free may help a little, but remember there’s all that chocolate in it too. If anyone out there still plays bridge, this might be a good dessert to bring along for the sideboard (or piano bench in my childhood home) near the card tables. That way you get a taste without ALL of it going to your waist.

Ginger and Fig Conserve

Refrigerator preserving is a grand thing. I have lots and lots of figs in the freezer and the refrigerator for my friends.

But I look outside, and notice the figs still outnumber us. The cats don’t like fresh figs, and 3 other families in the neighborhood aren’t enough to help us devour them.

Possible recipe salvation: 1-3/4 cups sugar and 1/4 cup maple syrup to 2 cups (plus) figs, a little water to cover, lots and lots of simmering, adding in chopped candied ginger, and when the thermometer says 200 degrees Fahrenheit = something really close to fig jam. Eventually, with enough canning apparatus, I could solve the fig problem. And what a grand, sweet problem to have.

(I know this is a day of remembrance. Best of wishes to everyone who marks this day, and best of wishes for those who are just keeping on….)

Fair Weather for a Saturday

C'mon and Hop On

I’m arranging my virtual scrapbook, adding pictures from the Maryland State Fair. The Fair is open through Labor Day, so if you’re in the area, you should check it out. (I’m including links for those of you who live too far away to make the drive.) The lamb gyros are pretty tasty, but the real food winner is peach dumplings with ice cream on top. So… totally… worth it.

There were sheep in pens, sheep shown in the ring, pigs, the cow palace, and of course — displays of yarn, ribbon-winning knit items, and crochet that ranged from novice effort to the sublime. Those 4-H yarn skills are fierce! We did miss the pig races and 4-H costume competition.

I loved the equestrian competitions. My user error = blurry horses and riders (while the backgrounds look great!).

If you do go, remember — the peach dumplings are good. And take time to look at the sheep (but eat any lamb burgers where the sheep can’t see you).

The End