The Faudie Finally Cooks a Gourmet Meal

Yes, it's true. I finally cooked a Gourmet meal--and that's Gourmet as in Gourmet magazine.

Last Friday, my copy of the March 2009 Gourmet arrived, and, as usual, I quickly thumbed through it, admired some of the pretty pictures and scoffed at many of the recipes and some of the articles. But unlike previous issues, I actually found myself tearing off pieces of those reader-response card inserts (those damn things are so annoying , not to mention wasteful) to bookmark a few recipes that I really and truly thought I'd make. Gads, does that mean I'm moving out of faudiedom to--heavens to Murgatroid!--foodiedom?

The first (and probably the only) recipe I made from this issue is a variation on a dish I've made before--tomatoey spiced chickpeas--sans chicken. It appears in the magazine's "Quick Kitchen" section, and I'll agree that it's a damn quick and easy dish to put together, even when you're like me and making your chickpeas from a bag, not a can.

Tomatoey Spiced Chickpeas1/3 C olive oil
1 T ground cumin
1 T ground coriander
1 t ground ginger
Rounded 1/4 t hot red pepper flakes
1 1.5" cinnamon stick
1 28-oz. can whole tomatoes in juice
2 15-oz. cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1/2 C chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 C finely chopped mint

1. Heat the oil in a 12" heavy skillet over medium heat unit it shimmers, then cook the cumin, coriander, ginger, pepper flakes and cinnamon stick, stirring constantly, until fragrant and a shade darker (about 2 min.).
   
2. Add the tomatoes with their juices, breaking them up with a spoon.
   
3. Add the chickpeas.
   
4. Simmer the stew, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened (about 20 min.).
   
5. Discard the cinnamon stick.
   
6. Stir in the parsley and mint.

Yield: 4 as a main course, 6 as a side dish

Nutritional Info
Gourmet does not provide nutritional information with its recipe. I suspect if readers saw the nutritional data for some of the recipes it prints, they'd cancel their subscriptions. Ignorance is bliss, right?

The Faudie's Futzing
Heh, would it surprise you, Gentle Reader, that I just now realized that the recipe calls for a total of 30 ounces of prepared chickpeas? Oh well. Given my past experience of converting self-prepared chickpeas to canned chickpeas, I probably wound up with the right amount by just measuring out 15 ounces of dried chickpeas. Even then, I honestly wondered if I should have prepared fewer.

And you probably won't be surprised to learn that I didn't use a third of a cup of olive oil. That's just way too much for me. Since I was using my old nonstick wok, I knew I wouldn't need too much oil anyway, but I really don't think I used quite enough since my spices got doughy in the little oil I used as I was toasting them. However, that didn't affect their flavor.

One last futzing: I omitted the parsley and mint. I'd originally planned to throw in some freshly chopped cilantro, but when the boy learned I was making chickpeas, he said he wanted some too. I knew that throwing in cilantro would sour him on the dish, so I left it out. While he only tried a bit--and thoroughly enjoyed it--he has yet to have a full serving. That's what leftovers are for.

Just a note, Gentle Reader, if you try this recipe for yourself: Consider pouring the tomatoes and their juice into a bowl before you start cooking so you can break up the tomatoes with your hands or your utensils of choice. I had a helluva time doing it in the beginning-to-simmer pot with just the wooden spoon I was using, so I wound up breaking out my lovely Victorinox paring knife to cut them up, and even that took me quite some time. I was afraid what little sauce I had would cook off to nothing by the time I got the tomatoes broken up.

Marathon Man

Yesterday, the boy completed his very first marathon. Yep, he put in 26.2 miles over six months and wrapped it up with a ceremonial almost-a-lap and earned his Marathon Kids finisher medal. (His Marathon Kids finisher t-shirt he'll get in, like, April or May.)

I suppose at some point in the near future, I'll be hooking him up with his own Nike+ system. Cool.

Yeah, Teens Really Need This in School

Wow, here's just a bloody brilliant idea: in-school coffee bars. Give me a friggin' break.

"A large Snickers Frapp, which is 20 ounces, has 402 calories, 12.5 grams of fat, 22 grams of sugar and about 60 milligrams of caffeine. By comparison, 20 ounces of Coca-Cola has about 243 calories, no fat, 65 grams of sugar and 58 milligrams of caffeine, according to the company. Also popular at the coffee shop are the cookie dough and cookies-and-cream Frapps. A large Frapp is $2.75, and a smaller 12-ounce Frapp is $2.15."

And I bet those cookie dough and cookies-and-cream "Frapps" are oh so nutritious too!

"Hey now, kids, just say no to drugs and cigarettes and other addictive substances, but don't you fret about being a caffeine junkie! We may be pulling soda machines out of school because, after all, sodas cause obesity, but don't stop gulping down those extra-tall full-of-fats-and-sugar mochafrappalattesppressos with extra whipped cream!"

99 Miles of Running to Go

Sing along, Gentle Reader!

99 miles of running to go!
99 miles to run!
Ya take some laps
Then take a nap
99 miles of running to go!

Okay, so it's not the best rendition of "99 Bottles of Beer" ever, but I've never claimed to be a lyricist.

The Case Against Cursive Redux

This week's Newsweek (the U.S. edition, at least) features a fun essay supporting the eradication of cursive handwriting from education. As you know, Gentle Reader, I'm all for getting rid of this waste of time, and it's nice that a national publication is giving the topic some column space.

Among the things that essayist Jessica Bennett notes is that people who support the teaching and use of script have used various arguments to bolster their position, including research. One study that she gives as an example uncovered "that the majority of primary-school teachers believe that students with fluent handwriting produce better work." Bennett adds immediately, "though it seems just as likely that the teachers might 'believe' that because legible handwriting makes their jobs easier."

Perhaps if teachers just gave students time (more than the 15 minutes Bennett says is the average amount devoted to penmanship in class these days) to practice writing legibly in whatever style comes naturally, be it cursive or print, more people would enjoy the art of handwriting. Perhaps we should stop calling handwriting an art so as to remove the pressure to make using a pen or pencil with paper to record thoughts some kind of masterpiece. Let's face it--jotting down a few grocery items on the back of an envelope or expired coupon when you're waiting at a red light ain't like painting the friggin' Sistine Chapel. Nor should it be.

Flying High Again

After the hellish week I had last week, my Monday was spec-frickin'-tacular! Let me tell you about it, Gentle Reader.

I Run, Therefore I Am
So the boy was out of school yesterday, and I was prepared to have a good day nevertheless. We hit the gym, and I'd already decided to cut my weight work a bit short so I'd have plenty of time to run. And given that I'm still not back up to 7.0 MPH, I need extra time to get in what I consider a decent run.

And run I did! For the first time since my right ankle started smarting, I was able to put in 10 miles. Boy oh boy, it felt so good to run that far. In fact, I only hit the 'ol pause button once so I could adjust my knee band. Before the ankle ouchie, I typically stopped every 3 miles so I could swig a little from my water bottle and fight the slight dehydration all my various allergy and asthma meds cause. What's even better is that I felt full of energy for the entire run. Gotta love that!

If I can repeat that feat tomorrow, I'll have logged 900 miles since the end of July. Woohoo!

Look What I Made out of a Piece of String!
Okay, technically I finished this little project this morning, but I wrapped up most of the concentration-heavy work last night. But I'm very, very proud of this scarf, which I knit for Mum from yarn she bought, because the pattern wasn't a simple garter or stockinette thing. Nope, I was knitting and purling in the same row, and the pattern in each row changed practically every row--and I didn't screw up royally!

Okay, sure, I probably could have paid more attention to the tension so my gauge was more even. I still consider myself an early beginner, and this project, like the others I've completed, is a learning experience. This pattern certainly gave me plenty of opportunities to practice my knitting and purling, as well as particular combinations of those two basic stitches. The end result, I think, is quite lovely:
Maybe with a bit more practice and, well, attention to details, I can revisit this pattern and make something that ends up looking like the picture above.

My next project is another blanket, this time for the boy. The lovely blue, purple and black wool yarn I scored for half-price that he initially liked turned out not to be good enough. He picked out some blue and red on our second trip to Michael's and directed me to make him a striped blanket "with blue first. Remember that," he warned me. The FSM help me if I forget!

The End of a No-Good, Awful, Rotten Week

I realize it's been a while since I've posted. I didn't post much after the boy's birthday because that weekend sort of wiped me out. I'd barely had time to catch my breath and gather my wits when we got slammed by some oh-so-fun behavior problems at school.

Namely, the boy seemed on his sixth birthday to become so out-of-control freak. I mean, he pushed a little girl in his class while they were lined up to go to gym or music or art or whatever, and when asked why he did that, he said he didn't know--although he said he didn't do it because she first pushed one of his friends. For that little incident, he got himself 25 minutes of before-school detention. To say that I was most upset by this little incident is the understatement of the year.

Anyway, all this crappola with him has just...it's a huge headache because it just seemed to come out of nowhere, and we can't pinpoint why it's happening--or happened, should this crap hopefully just have been confined to last week. So I haven't exactly had the wherewithal to put together any post, save the one about the cilantro haters. Oh well.

V-Day
Remember Valentine's Day, Gentle Reader, back in the day when it was all about picking out your favorite cartoon character cheapie paper Valentine's set with the bonus teacher card or maybe, if your family was rich, the Valentine's cards that came with a Lifesaver sucker for each, and those Valentine's cards you'd address, one each, to every member of your class so that at some point before the classroom Valentine's Day party, you and your fellow students would deliver them into whatever brown paper sack or shoe box you each had to cover with construction paper hearts, maybe some ribbon or bric-ab-rac, maybe some stickers (again, if you were rich) or maybe those heart-shaped paper doilies your Mom scored at TG&Y? Remember those days? Before you dressed in black on Valentine's Day and scoffed at the heart-shaped Mylar balloons and extravagant rose bouquets your other classmates carries around with them from class to class because those damn things wouldn't fit in their locker and the florist had delivered them after lunch, when they could have taken them home? Before you were disgusted (or really even aware) of the crass commercialism surrounding this nonholiday and just saw it as a chance to do nifty things with red construction paper and to do special things for a lot of people?

Yeah, my memories of those days are fading fast too, Gentle Reader.

Anywho, I'd volunteered to bring cupcakes for the boy's classroom Valentine's Day party because, hey, ya wanna make a few happy memories of grade school Valentine's Days for your kid, right? With that impetus, I even went a step further in my cupcake making and made almond bark (tinted pink, of course) heart-shaped candies from an old Wilton candy mold I'd bought back in my hard-core Martha Stewart-y days to put atop each cupcake. Did I get Valentine-themed paper cupcake wrappers? Hell no, Gentle Reader. Those things are expensive and ridiculous. What kindergartener really gives a rat's ass about the paper around her or his cupcake?

They look pretty scrumptious, don't they? Low-sugar plain white cake topped with a fairly generous helping of homemade chocolate buttercream frosting and decorated with a homemade almond bark candy heart. What more could a kindergartener want at a Valentine's Day party? (Don't answer that. And if right now you're dredging up memories of Knox Blox in holiday-appropriate shapes that one kid's mom always made for every frickin' classroom party that all your classmates thought were so cool but you thought were tasteless and kitschy the way I am, then I feel sorry that you had to suffer through those things as I did.)

And you'd never guess that chocolate buttercream frosting started out as a mass of white, gray and blue buttercream frostings I had leftover from the boy's R2-D2 cake, would you? Nope, there's enough Nestle Toll House cocoa powder and milk mixed in that you'd never would have guessed it had once been a puce-colored mass of buttercream frosting. Yeah, I'm pretty proud that little culinary misadventure worked out surprisingly well because I had my doubts while I was whipping it up. Yup, I had some pretty serious doubts.

Lovey Day Food
So what did the human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker eat to celebrate Valentine's Day? Well, we started with lunch at Madras Pavillion. We would have gone to Rangoli, but, alas, Rangoli is no more. (We discovered that last Saturday.) And since we'd just visited Indian Palace the week prior, we opted for Madras Pavillion, and it was delish as always.

Since stuffing ourselves stupid at Madras Pavillion's buffet is always a given, I planned on a lighter supper. My initial idea was Acapulco chicken (that link is not for the recipe I use, Gentle Reader, but it gives you an idea of the flavor), but I didn't have all the ingredients I needed, and I'm not keen these days on making special trips for ingredients when I have a pantry full of ingredients for other recipes I could make. So that's what I did--I dug into my giant folder of chicken recipe bookmarks and dug out one of the very first recipes I'd bookmarked for future use: raspberry chicken using raspberry jam. Believe you me, Gentle Reader, I've had a jar of low-sugar Smucker's raspberry jam sitting on a pantry shelf for months and months, just waiting for me to use it for this chicken dish or a raspberry-chocolate bar recipe I made once a long time ago that the husband loved that I've yet to revisit.

Raspberry Chicken1/2 t dried thyme
1/2 t rubbed sage
1/4 t pepper
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (4 oz. each)
1/4 C seedless raspberry jam
2 T orange juice
2 T red wine vinegar

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
   
2. Combine the thyme, sage and pepper, then rub it over the chicken.
   
3. Lightly brown the chicken in a skillet coated with cooking spray.
   
4. Transfer the chicken to a 9" square baking dish coated with cooking spray. Cover and bake for 15 min. or until the juices run clear.
   
5. In a saucepan, combine the jam, orange juice and vinegar, then bring it to a boil. Let the sauce boil for 2 min. Serve with the chicken.

Yield: 4 servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 174
Fat: 3 g
Cholesterol: 73 mg
Sodium: 65 mg
Carbs: 9 g
Protein: 27 g

The Faudie's Futzings
Not only did I buy the raspberry jam for this recipe months ago, I'd also bought the thyme and sage for it too. Those little bags have sat neglected in my Gladware container of little bulk spice bags until Saturday--and then I only used the sage because I have bundle of fresh thyme on my counter that I opted to use instead. The fresh stuff is far more aromatic and flavorful than that dried crap.

I wound up pouring the boiled sauce over the chicken because the chicken was nowhere near cooked through after 15 minutes in Lumpy. I think I needed almost 20 additional minutes of cooking time for the chicken to be ready, and I figured, Hell, I might as well let the chicken absorb some of the sauce's flavor, plus having that liquid in the pan might keep it from drying out. I'm guessing I needed all that additional baking time because the breasts were pretty damn thick. You can't get thin chickie boobs here. They're plumper than a set of double-D silicon implants, thank you very much.

That sauce, by the way, is quite tasty. I was a little concerned the vinegar would throw it off, but it didn't. And I have to admit, Gentle Reader, that I feel no better than Poppy Cannon now when I make sauces from ingredients such as jams and whatnot. I mean, doing that is no better than whipping up something with a can of cream of mushroom soup, right? But I just don't do from-scratch sauces and glazes. I can't afford fresh raspberries (yeah yeah, I know--eat according to the season and all that crap), and I don't have the interest nor, more importantly, the skills to put together a respectable sauce or glaze from scratch.

Of course, I couldn't just serve the chicken and its sauce by itself. No, I needed a side dish. I didn't have much for veggie choices--some frozen sugar snap peas, frozen zucchini slices I'd put away, some carrots and that's about it. None of that set my taste buds atwitter, so I fell back on our family's side dish standby: rice. Specifically, basmati rice. From there, my thoughts went to a rice pilaf of some sort, but what?

Not long ago, I found myself in search of a suitable rice pilaf to go along with pork chops and had considered some kind of pilaf that included mushrooms. I found myself once again pondering a rice and mushroom recipe even though the boys loathe 'shrooms. This time, though, I prevailed.
Mushroom-Chive Pilaf1 T olive oil
1/2 C minced fresh onion
1 garlic clove, minced
2 C low-salt chicken broth
1/2 t salt
1/2 t white pepper
1 C uncooked basmati rice
1/4 C chopped chives
1/4 C thinly sliced green onions
1 8-oz. package mushrooms, chopped

1. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.
   
2. Add the onion and garlic, then sauté 2 min.
   
3. Add the broth, salt and pepper.
   
4. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the rice. Cover, reduce the heat and simmer 35 minutes.
   
5. Remove the rice mix from the heat, then let it stand 5 min.
   
6. Stir in the chives, green onions and mushrooms.

Yield: 6 servings (serving size is 1 cup)

Nutritional Info
Calories: 161
Fat: 3.2 g
Sat fat: 0.5
Protein: 4.1g
Carbs: 29.1 g
Fiber: 1.2g
Sodium: 226 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Only did two futzings with this recipe:

• I didn't have any chives, so I used half a cup of sliced green onions. Besides, is there really much difference between chives and green onions to faudies and the like?
  
• I only had a four-ounce can of mushroom pieces and stems, which is probably for the best since I was the only person who'd be eating them.

That said, the next time I make this recipe, I'm going to reduce the amount of chicken broth to just 1.5 cups since that's how much water I typically use when making rice. The husband and I both have found the 2:1 ratio of liquid to uncooked rice is wrong, and I feel it is in this recipe too.

Also, I'm going to halve the amount of white pepper because all three of us found half a teaspoon too overwhelming. Perhaps the problem is that the ground white pepper I have is very fine. It's not at all like the more coarse black pepper I get from my mill. Perhaps the recipe should specify a fairly coarse white ground pepper.

Oh, and not only was the raspberry sauce very good on the chicken, but when it mingled with the rice, it gave the rice a nice flavor too. If you're disgusted by the idea of letting a fruity sauce mingle with a rice pilaf, Gentle Reader, all I can say is this: Get over yourself.

Why Ya Gotta Hate?

Waay back when I first started this little endeavor, I regaled you, Gentle Reader, with a quick tale of a former coworker who hated cilantro, calling it "that foul weed." I just thought it was a personal quirk of his.

But I was wrong. Evidently, cilantro pisses off a lot of people, not just my kid and my former coworker. I mean, the hate is strong enough to land on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Check it out!

The Making of Artoo, Day Two

or
The Making of a Masterpiece, Day Two

Okay, Gentle Reader, the finished cake's not that great, but I have to admit that I surprised myself by how well it turned out.

And I did in about half the time I estimated--just about 3 hours, excluding breaks to pick up the boy, use the facilities, shoo Bucket off the oven, find a missing mousie for Bucket, feed Parmer and just take a breather.

Nevertheless, I've been on my feet practically nonstop since about...well, practically since I got my arse out of bed at 5:30 this morning. Which means I'm tired. Damn tired. Too tired to write much about doing the cake. So instead, I present you with a slideshow of my work. Enjoy!

If you're perhaps wondering if I've done all this work in vain, Gentle Reader, I will say that the boy did give me a hug shortly before I finished the cake. Of course, that was about half an hour after I'd snarled at him that he'd better be grateful for the R2-D2 cake I'm making him for this birthday when he started rambling on and on about how for his next birthday, he wanted an R2-D2 cake made just like the one I made for Daddy years ago.

Speaking of that first Artoo masterpiece, I was wrong when I wrote that I'd made it in 2000. I actually made in 2001. I turned 25 in 2000; the husband turned 25 in 2001. If I can ever get the damn thing uploaded to YouTube, I plan to share with you a commemorative video of that first Artoo cake that the husband put together back in the day. So, uh, stay tuned, Gentle Reader!

UPDATE
YouTube had actually uploaded the video each time I tried even though it kept spitting out an error message. Grrr. Oh well, here's the promised video. Enjoy!

The Making of Artoo, Day One

The boy's sixth birthday is Thursday. I promised I'd make him an R2-D2 cake just like the one I made the husband for his 25th birthday some years ago. Believe it or not, I haven't used the pan since that birthday, but perhaps that's for the best. I'm not sure how well a Wilton pan from 1980 will hold up to repeated use.

But the year isn't 1980 nor 2000. It's 2009, and there's a little boy with ridiculously high expectations for a birthday cake to be pleased.

Step 1: Screw Up the Cake
I had initially planned not to futz with the Betty Crapper party rainbow chip cake mix I'd bought. I had real, whole eggs. I had oil.

But I couldn't do it. As I prepared to make the cake this morning, I hunted down oil alternatives after the Web site for cholesterol-free cake mix options from Betty Crapper was, well, crap. While I have applesauce, I didn't want to use it because I know well how dense cake turns out when applesauce replaces the oil. So I confirmed that I could use fat-free plain yogurt, and I even took the time to drain the one-third cup of yogurt before adding it to the batter.

And I probably shouldn't have. Once I mixed it with the equivalent of three whole eggs in carton-pourable egg whites and the powder from the box, I had batter that was the consistency of nearly frozen toothpaste. Yeah, Gentle Reader, it was that thick. Not a good thing.

So what does The Faudie do when confronted with ultra-thick cake batter? She adds a little pourable egg white. Then a little more. Then a little more again. Then she surrenders and hopes to hell the frosting-consistency batter will actually rise.

And it did. The cake out of the oven and out of the pan looked not too bad. Sure, it had a few divots on the underside, a few pock marks on the topside, but at least the damn thing rose. Slap some thinned out royal icing as a crumb coat to select parts, and you've got yourself what looks like might become a respectable R2-D2 cake.

But as the day wore on, I doubted the work I'd done this morning. After burning up 30 minutes or more along with two stick of light butter, nearly two teaspoons of clear vanilla extract from Wilton (not cheap, Gentle Reader) and damn near a bag and a half of powdered sugar to make frosting, I didn't want to blow the project because of a nasty cake. I made a tough decision: Since I had to stop at HEB to pick up a 'script so I can keep breathing, I would also pick up a new mix and make a second cake, this time following Ms. Crapper's directions to a T.

Step 2: Give the Birthday Boy a Thrill and Let Him Hack Up a Not-Birthday Cake
When I picked up the boy from school, I told him I had some bad news and some good news.

"Uh-oh," said the boy ominously in reply.

"Well, the good news is that Artoo came out of the pan just fine."

"Uh-huh."

"The bad news is that I'm going to have to make a new cake because I'm concerned the cake's going to taste nasty. Remember how thick the batter was this morning?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, I'm going to do it over again. After all, other people besides you, me and Daddy have to eat this cake."

"Uh-huh."

(He's a great conversationalist, that boy of mine.)

"But another piece of good news is that you get a not-birthday cake to eat for a snack."

"Yes!" the boy proclaimed, shooting a fist into the air.

"And I'll even let you cut it yourself."

That's when the boy shot me an evil-looking grin. Man, I couldn't have been prouder of him.

By the way, R2 v1.0 was the consistency of a cake donut. That's been sitting on a tray in the display case at the grocery store for a few days. That could double as a sponge or a paperweight.

But the flavor wasn't too bad.

R2 v2.0, however, looks like a real cake. So what if it has about a dozen grams of fat per serving!

It's sort of appropriate that I had to make a second cake. When I made the first R2-D2 birthday cake back in 2000, I made a trial cake to see exactly how much of the contouring of the pan would translate into actual detail on the cake and to test out decorating techniques since the pan did not come with the original decorating guide. Hey, what can you expect for a Wilton pan from 1980 that I acquired on eBay?

Step 3: Try to Please Mr. Perfection When Whipping Up Colored Frosting
I warned the boy before we started adding food color to buttercream frosting that I would not be able to make frosting that exactly matched the paint used on the Artoo action figure case/playset I would be using again as a guide for decorating. I warned him again about the limitations of food color and buttercream as I blended in another eighth of a teaspoon (or thereabouts) of McCormick's blue dye to try to make the frosting more blue than sea foam green.

Do I have to tell you, Gentle Reader, how disappointed the boy was when the finished blue frosting was a far cry from the royal blue on the Artoo plastic case?

Yeah, I love the boy so much some days. Really makes it worth all the time and effort I put into these little projects for him. Yeah, really makes me want to be on my feet for six or so hours tomorrow decorating R2 v2.0 in spite of my incredibly painful right Achilles tendon that's prevented me from running today and made me cut short my run Monday (and has me really pissed off that I can't run for a while). Yeah, but I'm going to do it anyway because at this point, decorating this damn cake is all about proving a point to myself: that I still can do some of the things I did back when I was younger and a little less crazed.

Yeah, that's exactly how to go about these things, isn't it?