Where the Wild Things Are

The husband is trying something new. Here he is with the first part of his story.

--The Faudie

For all of the bread-making we've done since we bought our first bread machines last summer, there's one type of bread I've shied away from: sourdough. It's not because I don't like sourdough--because I most certainly do--but rather because every chapter on sourdough in any bread cookbook has an opening such as this one from The Bread Machine Cookbook:

As the early day pioneers traveled west across the United States, they carried a mixture of flour and milk or water which was used to leaven bread.

And it gets worse from there. Here's what King Arthur Flour has to say about that mixture--known as a "starter"--on their sourdough primer page:

To the early prospectors, a starter was such a valued possession (almost more than the gold they were seeking), that they slept with it to keep it from freezing on frigid winter nights.

Excuse me? I bought a bread machine because I want my bread-making to be easy. I don't want to hear about the labors and sleeping habits of early pioneers!

But recently, my curiosity got the better of me, and I set out to explore the strange and amazing world of sourdough. And that journey began with a better understanding of the mysterious starter. For those who don't know, to make a loaf of sourdough bread, you'll need to use a portion of a starter. No other bread we've prepared needs a starter, but sourdough does. Most of our bread cookbooks include a recipe for making one (all slightly different from one another), but King Arthur had me hooked when they said this:

The easiest and most successful method of making your own starter is to combine water, flour, and a tablespoon (or packet) of active dry "domestic" yeast which is available at any grocery store. By letting this brew sit for several days...the domestic yeast will go "wild" and develop the familiar tang of its truly wild cousins. You'll probably catch some wild yeast in the process as well.

Oh, yeah. The opportunity to create anything that can "go wild" is not one to be passed up. This was an experiment I needed to try.

Here's the full recipe for the starter, from King Arthur's site:

Sourdough Starter

2 C warm water
1 T sugar or honey (optional)
1 T active dry yeast
2 C King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

1. Pour the water into a two-quart glass or ceramic jar or bowl.
2. Add and dissolve the sugar or honey and the yeast in that order.
3. Stir in the flour gradually.
4. Cover the jar or bowl with a clean dishcloth and place it somewhere warm. By using a dishcloth instead of plastic wrap, you'll allow any wild yeast in the area to infiltrate and begin to work with the domestic yeast which itself is beginning to develop "wild" characteristics and flavors.

Yield: One starter

Nutritional Info
Not provided, because who would want to eat this? Yeeeech.

The boy readily volunteered to be my lab partner for this particular experiment. Once he understood the basic functioning of yeast--or at least, once he got hold of the idea that the yeast eat the sugars in the mixture, then "fart" out gases in return--there was no way he was going to be deterred from making a starter too.

Thus we ended up preparing two starters, different only in one regard: for one, we used sugar (evaporated cane juice, specifically, which Angela had picked up for us earlier that day), and for the other, we used molasses (an ingredient suggested by other sources).

King Arthur warned us it wouldn't take long for the mixture to start bubbling and brewing, and they were right. When we checked on the starters a few hours after we'd prepared them, there were plenty of bubbles rising to the surface. (The kiddo, in particular, was delighted with this by-product of the "farting" yeast.)

In fact, the starters were so active that the one in the smaller container quickly began outgrowing its habitat.

Time for a larger bowl!

We switched this starter to a larger bowl...which it outgrew by bedtime.

Time for an even larger bowl!

That was yesterday. When we checked the starters today, expecting them to be huge by that point, we were surprised to find that they'd actually shrunk somewhat overnight. Even worse, they didn't seem as active as they'd been before. I was worried at first, but King Arthur's sourdough primer assures me that everything is proceeding normally (I think). Apparently, a starter begins to separate after a day or so and needs to be stirred to blend it back together and to help distribute the yeast evenly. See how much I'm learning about sourdough? This is the best science lesson ever!

Now we're just waiting--we're supposed to let the starters rest at room temperature for two to five days, catching wild yeast until the bubbling ceases and a yeasty, sour aroma has developed. And then (finally!) it will be time to use a portion of the starters to bake some loaves of sourdough. Check back in a few days to see if we can tame these wild, farting yeast!

Lifting Risotto's Veil of Mystery

Last summer while reading Bill Buford's Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, I learned quite a bit about a dish I'd never eaten and didn't have that much interest in: risotto. While hanging out in Mario Batali's kitchens for various purposes, Buford himself learned quite a bit about risotto and passed along that education, in part, to his readers. The message I came away with is this: Risotto is fussy, temperamental, needy, time-consuming, high-maintenance and will turn on you if you don't devote yourself to it while preparing it.

Or maybe that was his education about polenta. Or maybe it was both. Sorry, Gentle Reader. Last summer was a long time ago.

Anywho, I like my rice pretty simple: Join the right amount of water to the desired quantity of rice, bring it to a boil, cover, reduce heat and leave it be. I'm also somewhat suspicious of shorter-grain rice varieties since I find they get gluteny and sticky and clumpy and mushy at the drop of a hat. I like my grains long and fluffy, thank you very much. The rice variety used most frequently in 'merica for risotto, arborio, looks a lot like the grains sold as Japanese sushi rice--short and somewhat squat. Not for me, thanks. I'll pass.

But then a few weekends ago, the boys and I were at the big HEB scavenging through several bins of deeply discounted clearance items. The big HEB, unlike our regular HEB, has a few long aisles of imported stuff from around the world--good-quality imported stuff at that. We found some really nifty pastas, but they were still a bit pricey, along with some roasted tomato and basil spread that's worked quite nicely on a pizza and some roasted red bell peppers, which I know I'll put to good use eventually.

We also found a few boxes of risotto allegedly imported from Italy. The price was nice--$1.50--and the boy's eyes lit up when I held up the box. He's a huge rice fan, plus he likes his pasta. For a buck-fifty, I can give my boy a cheap (literally!) thrill.

I yanked the box out of the pantry on Monday, for I didn't want to have leftovers for supper (which we often do because we need to make space in the refrigerator, plus they're easier to serve as a staggered meal if the husband gets delayed at the plasma donation center after work) but didn't want to make pasta (another easy meal to serve staggered). The recipes printed on the package seemed easy, and I had the ingredients--but they just didn't seem all that exciting. So I do what I often do when I have ingredients I want to use but not an exciting source of inspiration: I seek out Madhur Jaffrey.

Off the shelf came my copy of World Vegetarian. Sure enough, Ms. Jaffrey included a handful of risotto recipes with very clear instructions for their preparation. Add the broth one ladleful at a time? Well, I've got nothing better to do on a Monday afternoon. Stir constantly? Again, I've got nothing better to do.

Risotto With Spinach, Golden Raisins and Pine Nuts4 C light vegetable stock
3 T olive oil
2 T pine nuts
Half of a smallish onion (about 1 oz.), peeled and finely chopped
1 T golden raisins
10 oz. fresh spinach, trimmed, washed, patted dry and cut into fine ribbons
1 C unwashed risotto
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/2 C grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1 T unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

1. Heat the stock and keep it hot over very, very low heat.
   
2. Put the oil in a large, heavy, preferably nonstick frying or saute pan, and set it over medium-high heat.
   
3. Toast the pine nuts in the olive oil until golden brown, then remove them with a slotted spooon.
   
4. Add the onion to the pan, stirring and frying it for a min.
   
5. Add the raisins, stir a few times and then add the spinach, stirring and frying 3 to 4 min.
   
6. Add the rice and cinnamon, and stir and fry for another minute.
   
7. Pour in a generous ladleful of stock, reduce heat to medium and keep stirring the risotto.
   
8. When the stock has been absorbed, add another ladleful.
   
9. Repeat step 8 until all the stock has been used and the rice has cooked for at least 22 min. By this time, it should be just done.
   
10. Cook the rice another minute or so to absorb the last of the liquid.
    
11. Add the cheese and butter and stir until they have melted and disappeared in the rice.
    
12. Turn off the heat, let the risotto rest a min. or two, stir and serve, sprinkling the pine nuts over the top.

Yield: 3 to 4 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
I can't tell you what's in the finished dish, but I can give you the lowdown from some two standout ingredients:
Delallo Superfino Arborio Rice (quarter-cup per serving)
Calories: 170
Carbs: 41 g
Protein: 3 g

Il Villaggio Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (1 oz. per serving)
Calories: 110
Fat: 8 g
Sat fat: 6 g
Protein: 9 g
Cholesterol: 25 mg
Na: 180 mg

It's not the most healthful dish in the world, but it's not the worst either.

The Faudie's Futzings
As you probably know, Gentle Reader, I tend not to futz with a recipe for a dish I've never eaten before or for an ingredient I've never worked with before because of my inexperience. However, with this risotto recipe, I felt confident enough in my previous (and prodigious) culinary misadventures with other forms of rice that I could futz a little:

• I used the Central Markup low-sodium chicken broth I had on hand. Sure, I stopped at the big HEB Monday after my workout to buy the special cheese and the pine nuts (I wasn't sure if I had any left from the bunch I'd bought for the highly intoxicating tequila bars I made ages ago) and could have easily bought some Central Markup veggie broth, but I didn't. I figured I'd save two bucks--at least on that trip to an HEB.
  
• I used a teaspoon, maybe a teaspoon and a half of olive oil. Three tablespoons just seems like overkill to me, and my gut can't take that much oil.
  
• My spinach was frozen and already chopped from a bag I'd bought in hopes of one day making some creamy chicken and spinach for the boys. I'm not sure if this one really qualifies as a futzing because in her notes for the recipe, Ms. Jaffrey writes, "If you wish to use frozen spinach, defrost and drain it first." See, Gentle Reader, Ms. Jaffrey recognizes that not all of us have ready access to, can afford or like to work with fresh spinach. And as much as I suck at draining previously frozen spinach, I gave it my best shot--and wound up with unsightly clumps, not graceful fine ribbons. Oh well.
  
• I didn't serve the risotto immediately after it had finished cooking.

That last futzing might qualify more as a massive mistake, but it was one I couldn't avoid. I'd put off making the risotto as long as I could while still allowing myself enough time (as I'd estimated I'd need) to finish it just as the husband was returning from the plasma center. Of course, The Faudie plans and the FSM laughs: The husband was about half an hour delayed.

By the time I served the risotto, I'd committed a cardinal sin: I'd let it become clumpy. So for all my careful stirring and fussing with the heat as I'd added ladleful after ladleful of broth, I got clumpy, mushy risotto.
To be fair, with all that melted cheese in it, the risotto tasted really good. The mouth feel, though, left something to be desired. That didn't prevent me from eating a good deal of it, nor did it turn off either the husband or the boy. They both seemed to enjoy it tremendously.

Lest you think I only served risotto that night, I paired it with a leftover ginger and rosemary–brined pork loin (the neighbors don't have a thyme plant I can "borrow" from, but that huge rosemary is awfully convenient) I'd made Saturday. The hint of sweet from the cinnamon and the golden raisins paired with the savory bite of the ginger from the pork were, in my unworldly opinion, a great pairing.

Returning to the making of my first risotto, I have to say that I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. It's really not that difficult to make, and from what I've read in other sources, you don't have to stir the risotto incessantly as some people would have you believe. Furthermore, it's not like your standing over a blazing hot stove for hours on end stirring some thick concoction with the kitchen equivalent of a canoe oar. It's just a wooden spoon, for the FSM's sake! And the burner isn't even all that hot.

Of course, I made a batch of risotto for three to four people. I'm sure the batches Bill Buford made while working for Mario Batali were meant to serve dozens of people and so maybe someone did have to use the kitchen equivalent of a canoe oar to stir the pot, which was in a kitchen already sweltering from the preparation of many other foodstuffs. But seriously, Gentle Reader, what's the likelihood of you or me ever being in such circumstances? Exactly.

If you find you're growing bored with your usual rice and want to play, pick up some arborio superfino the next time you're out and about and have fun. This ingredient has lots of tasty--and not so tasty--possibilities.

Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler!

Admittedly, Mardi Gras 2010 has come and gone. Tits were flashed, beads were tossed (along with many stomachs' contents, I'm sure), king cakes were eaten.

Did we here at Chez Boeckman-Walker do any of these things? Well, as Meatloaf sang, "Two out of three ain't bad."

(We ate king cake, and the boy was tossed some beads at school. Get your mind out of the gutter, Gentle Reader!)

Since Tuesdays are incredibly crazy days for us, we enjoyed a Creole dish in honor of Mardi Gras the Saturday before. Instead of revisiting last year's Creole chicken dish, I instead hunted down a jambalayah recipe I thought we might enjoy. None of us had ever eaten it, and the boy was curious about it after watching the second-season DS9 episode "The Jem'Hadar." Which has nothing to do with Mardi Gras, but there is a scene in which jambalayah is consumed amongst the foilage of the "alien" world of the Stage 7 at Paramount.

Yeah, we're a bunch of nerds. Wanna make something of it, Gentle Reader?

Turkey Jambalaya1 T olive oil
1 1/2 C chopped onion
1 t bottled minced garlic
1 C chopped green bell pepper
1 C chopped red bell pepper
2 1/2 t paprika
1/2 t salt
1/2 t dried oregano
1/2 t ground red pepper
1/2 t black pepper
1 C uncooked long-grain rice
2 C fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
14.5 ounces canned diced tomatoes, undrained
2 C shredded cooked turkey
6 ounces andouille sausage, chopped
2 T sliced green onions

1. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.
   
2. Add the onion and garlic and sauté 6 min. or until lightly browned.
   
3. Stir in the bell peppers, paprika, salt, oregano, red pepper and black pepper, and sauté 1 min.
   
4. Add the rice and sauté 1 min.
   
5. Stir in the broth and tomatoes, and then bring the mixture to a boil.
   
6. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 15 min.
   
7. Add the turkey and sausage, cover and cook 5 min.
   
8. Sprinkle with green onions.

Yield: 8 one-cup servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 249
Fat: 7.6 g
Sat fat: 2.4 g
Protein: 17.3 g
Carbs: 27.4 g
Fiber: 2.7 g
Cholesterol: 42 mg
Sodium: 523 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Once I had the inspiration to make jambalaya, I had to find a recipe--and not just any 'ol recipe. I wanted to find something that was fairly authentic, so I got myself a brief education on the differences between Creole and Cajun foods, on the possible origins of jambalaya and on what can and should and shouldn't go into it, be it Creole-style or Cajun-style.

And then I wound up choosing a recipe from Cooking Light. Mind you, Gentle Reader, it didn't strike me as some bastardized abomination masquerading as jambalaya, for its ingredients by and large jived with the ingredients of other recipes I encountered, save the turkey. I suppose I went with it because I have a reasonable level of trust in recipes from Cooking Light. I can't say the same with recipes from, say, AllRecipes.com.

Given what I'd learned about jambalaya and my desire to create a fairly true-to-form dish and coupling them with my desire to make the dish...somewhat healthful, I futzed a wee bit:

• I substituted shredded chicken breast meat for the turkey. I read that Creole jambalaya has chicken, whereas the Cajun version has crawfish, shrimp and such. Plus I just didn't have any turkey on hand. (It's all in other dishes frozen and waiting for emergency thawing in the deep freezer.)
  
• I had to cook the breast in order to shred it, and I reserved the water in which I boiled the sucker to use as part of the broth. Thrifty, non?
  
• Because I used a whole chicken breast that probably weighed at least half a pound, I probably had more than 2 cups of shredded meat. Having too much chicken is never a problem in our household.
  
• I think I used more than 6 ounces of andouille sausage. When I bought it at Sprouts, I initially asked the deli worker for one link. Its weight, at the time, didn't calculate in my head to be 6 ounces, so I asked for two and went on my merry way. Later, as I realized my possible mistake with the weight, I came to suspect one link would have done the job. But, of course, I had two--and what the hell am I going to do with a second link of andouille sausage when I'm not even sure I'm using the first one right and try my damnedest to keep organ meats out of my kitchen?!? Obviously, Gentle Reader, I chopped 'em both up and threw 'em in the pot.
  
• To get the cup and a half of chopped onion, I used a full yellow onion then chopped up half of a red onion I had in the refrigerator that needed to be used. I was concerned the two onions might affect the flavor, and I'm not sure it did. They did, though, make the dish even more colorful.

Colorful, non?

I wish I'd taken a bit more time to learn about the sausage because as I was chopping it up, I stopped and pondered, Am I supposed to remove the casing, or is it supposed to stay on? I mean, with some sausages and extruded meat products with casings, you leave the casings on. Others, you should remove them--like with bologna. Or at least such was my dread at the time. Hell, how was I to know? The sausage I grew up with came in a plastic tube, and you obviously had to remove that casing.

To resole my dilemma, I took one of the chopped pieces, slit the casing and attempted to remove it. The meat inside promptly started to disintegrate. Well, the casing stays on, if only to keep the sausage together! I decided.

Naturally, when it came time for us to eat the jambalaya, the husband almost immediately noted the presence of the casing and its unchewable qualities. I myself didn't have any problems with it--but I'm not sure that's a good thing. And, of course, since Daddy was having problems with something in the dish, the boy had to have the exact same problem. So, out came a small Corelle bowl for the boys to share in which to deposit their sausage casings. Whatever. Crisis solved.

If you've never had andouille sausage before, Gentle Reader, trust me when I say it's got a nice bite to it. I think it imparts a good part of the dish's heat to it, along with the red pepper. If you wanted your jambalaya even hotter, you could probably substitute the full amount of the red pepper with cayenne or another hot chile's ground flesh. You could probably toss in some chopped hot peppers as well, but you'd then have to ask yourself, Am I staying somewhat true to the dish, or am I just trying to prove how macho I am?

No, Gentle Reader, I'm not judging you. I'm just making an observation.

We three human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker found the dish as I'd prepared it, with only the meat substitution and perhaps a bit more sausage than necessary, to really hit the spot. The husband even ran out to HEB to procure a warm loaf of crusty "French" to accompany our steaming bowls of Creole goodness. Sure, it wasn't Mardi Gras and we were nowhere near New Orleans and our jambalaya was probably a pale imitation of the real thing, but we were happy, had our bellies filled with warm goodness and not a one of us had to lift our shirts for a string of cheap beads.
Okay, the boy got beads, but they came with the king cake I'd bought at HEB. He also got the Christ child figure, so he's on the hook for the king cake next year. Sucker. Laissez les bons temps rouler, indeed.

How About Those Olympics?

I grew up a fan of figure skating. For me, 1994 means two things: I graduated from high school and we had Tonya and Nancy. Ahh, the mid- to late 1990s were really skating's latest golden age, weren't they, Gentle Reader? Michelle Kwan's departure a few years ago, to me, signaled the end of that era.

Now...now we have that awkward building phase. Who will emerge as an elite-level skater with real staying power? Who won't bolt for the ranks of Stars on Ice after his or her or their first World gold or silver or after Olympic gold or silver or even bronze?

But while that's all going on, we'll always have those fabulous costumes to mock!

My skating may suck, but I'm not wearing the douchiest costume! Booyah!

If you need a laugh, check out NPR's review of some of the costumes sported thus far at the Olympics. Hilarious!

And if you need more of a laugh, go watch the Norwegian curling team. At least they embrace their absurdity.

(I'll get back to food posts soon, Gentle Reader. I promise.)

Something Happens in Austin

Yeah, something happened in Austin today, Gentle Reader. Normally, I wouldn't give a rat's patoot, but this time, half of the happening happened really close to Chez Boeckman-Walker.

If you've missed news of the happening, a man burned down his family's home then flew his plane into an office building housing some IRS folks. The house just so happens to be two, two and a half blocks from Chez Boeckman-Walker. I'd heard sirens while kickboxing this morning, but since we live close to a police substation, a fire station and a hospital, we hear more than our fair share of sirens. I didn't think twice.

Then, around 11:30 a.m., I was in the car en route to my yoga class when I heard a plane had crashed into an office building at 183 and 360--the area where the husband planned to head around noontime for a quick visit to Target. Of course, he'd left his cell phone behind this morning, so I called his office line--and left a message. And, you guessed it, Gentle Reader, as I was calling, he was heading to Target and getting mighty snarled in traffic, which was being diverted hither and yon because the 183/360 area is just a clusterfuck of intersections and traffic lights and roads that aren't very well planned.

As I was in the gym bathroom getting my hair out of my face before teaching, I caught a news report on one of the three TVs in the women's locker room (yes, there are three of them in there, although I've never encountered more than three women in there at any one time) in which the reporter shared that the house fire and the plane crash were related.

"Oh my!" I gasp before trotting off to teach.

They weren't there when I got home from teaching shortly after 1 p.m., but by the time I left to pick up the boy from school at 2:30 p.m., a fresh crop of TV news van antennae had sprouted at the scene of the house fire. Naturally, as soon as the boy and I got home, we grabbed the camera and garage door controller and went to be gawkers and lookie-lous.

While on the scene, I was interviewed by an AP rep with a video camera, and then the boy and I had our picture taken by a rep from The New York Times. Weehee! The AP guy said I was a natural on camera. I shudder to think, though, how I look since my face is currently ravaged by acne (damn drying sinus medication) and my hair looked, I'm sure, oh so attractive. Oh well.

Here are the photos I took on our lookie-lou trip. Enjoy! (Although I'm not quite sure that's the appropriate verb here. That's kind of...icky.)

Cultivating Patience Through Cookies

In a post or two over the course of this little blog, I've railed against "time-saving" ingredients or cooking steps that aim to take the place of culinary acts that aren't that time-consuming in the first place. (I'm looking at you, frozen prechopped onion.) At times I find these rants to be a bit hypocritical because I admit that I'm hardly the most patient person in the world. When I've decided on some course of action, I don't take kindly to anything or anyone who gets in the way of me achieving the end result as skillfully and swiftly as I can.

For this reason, I totally suck at baking cookies.

No, let me amend that. It's one of the two reasons I totally suck at baking cookies. The other reason is that my pathetic attempts to reduce the sugar and fat content yield dough that's just worthless. But I have to admit that I'm fine with that poor result, in a way, because it allows me to learn what ingredients I can futz with and what ingredients are unfutzable.

It's the patience required to bake cookies that deters me from baking them much. Once I've put the time and energy into creating the dough, I want to bake it once and be done with it. I don't want to spend an additional half-hour or more dolloping balls of goop onto baking sheets, juggling baking sheets that are ready for the oven, need to come out of the oven, need to be emptied of their cooled cookies or need to rest for a few minutes so their cookie payload can settle. I'm just...my multitasking skills don't work that way.

Furthermore, the active role needed in baking cookies--the actual baking of the cookies, not the making of the dough--is more of a...minder role: You're minding the cookies while they bake, rest and cool, doing what I see as drudge work. If I'm going to be in the kitchen while a food product is being subjected to some sort of heat source to achieve an end result, I like to have a more...influential role. Once I pop a sheet of cookie dough balls into the oven, there's nothing I can really do to affect their outcome except check on them to be sure they're not transforming into burnt sacrifices. Boring! However, if I have a soup or a curry or a chicken breast cooking on the burner and I sense that it's going to go horribly wrong if I don't do something to prevent that, then I feel like I'm really accomplishing something.

I guess baking cookies doesn't give me the rosy glow of maternal or just plain 'ol feminine satisfaction Nestle and Poppin' Fresh would have me believe it should.
And perhaps there's some emotional issues tied to baking cookies, which Mum did a lot and which my elder sister did a fair amount too--and which I never attempted because I didn't want to tempt fate. But, hey, I'm sure that emotional baggage has nothing to do with my displeasure with and angst over baking cookies.

So that's the long-ass backstory of me and cookies. Knowing that, Gentle Reader, would it surprise you much if I told you I'm forever bookmarking cookie recipes? Yeah, silly thing to do when I hate baking cookies! For a while when I first began my faudie ways, I aimed for recipes I could fairly painless convert into cookie bars: Filling a jelly roll pan with all the dough and baking it all at once was right up my alley. But I fell out of doing even that much, yet I continued to eyeball and save cookie recipes.

When the January 2010 issue of Cooking Light arrived in my mailbox some weeks back, I happened upon an oatmeal-chocolate-cherry "heart healthy" cookie recipe that had me salivating. Initially I thought, Ahh hell, here's another recipe that I bet tastes good that I'll never actually try out. But something moved me, Gentle Reader. One day, I checked my pantry to see if I had the necessary ingredients, planning already to substitute dried cranberries for the dried cherries and using whatever baking chocolate I had on hand for the bittersweet chocolate called for in the recipe.

Then I decided to make the cookies for my Saturday noon yoga class.

Yup, I'd decided on a course of action. Come hell or high water--or adenoidectomy--I was going to make those cookies.

Chocolate-Cherry Heart Smart Cookies1.5 oz. (about 1/3 C) all-purpose flour
1.5 oz. (about 1/3 C) whole-wheat flour
1 1/2 C old-fashioned rolled oats
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
6 T unsalted butter
3/4 C packed light brown sugar
1 C dried cherries
1 t vanilla extract
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. Combine the flours, baking soda, oats and salt in a large bowl, and then stir them together with a whisk.
   Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat, then remove it from the heat and add the brown sugar, stirring until the mixture is smooth.
   
3. Add the sugar mixture to the flour mixture
   
4. Beat the contents of the large bowl with a mixer at medium speed until well-blended.
   
5. Add the cherries, vanilla and egg to the dough, and then beat them until combined.
   
6. Fold in the chocolate.
   
7. Drop the dough by tablespoonfuls 2" apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray.
   
8. Bake the cookies for 12 min., then let them cool on the pans 3 min. or until almost firm.
   
9. Remove the cooled cookies from the pans to finish cooling on wire racks.

Yield: 30 cookies (serving size: 1 cookie)

Nutritional Info
Calories: 94
Fat: 3.2 g
Sat fat: 1.6 g
Protein: 1.5 g
Carbs: 15.7 g
Fiber: 1.3 g
Cholesterol: 10 mg
Sodium: 88 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Given that my past futzings with cookie recipes have usually resulted in disaster and that this recipe struck me as not needing much futzing, I restrained myself when making the dough. Aren't you proud of me, Gentle Reader?

That said, I did change up a thing here and there:

• Even though I doubled the recipe to make sure I had enough for my yoga class, I didn't double the amount of dried fruit. A cup of dried cherries really isn't much, but a cup of dried cranberries is. Two cups of dried cranberries would have been overkill, so I used just a cup and a quarter.
  
• I used Splenda brown sugar blend, not just because I wanted to but also because it's the only brown sugar I have. I thought I had some regular stuff, but if I do, it's buried much deeper in the pantry than I looked.
  
• The chocolate I used was a combination of various melting chocolates I'd melted together and had leftover when the boys made their mice back in September. Some of it was El Cheapo CandiQuik, I think, and I seem to recall tossing in the last of the Baker's dark chocolate I had, which is just a step up from El Cheapo CandiQuik, if you're to believe a number of experienced bakers out there. That probably wasn't the brightest move on my part, using cheap chocolate that had already been put through its paces, melting, cooling, melting, cooling and then being refrigerated for several months. But, hey, it got that little container of chocolate out of my baking goodies draw in the 'fridge!

I prepared the dough on Wednesday as a means of helping me burn off some nervous energy about the boy's surgery the following day. I also chose to make the dough in advance and let it rest on the advice of David Leite, author of "Perfection? Hint: It's Warm and Has a Secret," which appeared in The New York Times way back on July 9, 2008, but who talked about his research and findings on an episode of The Splendid Table, which I've subscribed to in iTunes to listen to when I'm driving up and down Mopac on Tuesdays and Saturdays. (Must have been a rebroadcast show I was listening to, but I can't seem to find it in the iTunes library. Oh well.) Anywho, Mr. Leite discovered through cookie maker Maury Rubin and confirmed with CookWise author (and frequent Splendid Table guest) Shirley Corriher that letting the dough (in this case, chocolate chip cookie dough) rest 36 hours, thereby "'...allowing the dough and other ingredients to fully soak up the liquid--in this case, the eggs--in order to get a drier and firmer dough, which bakes to a better consistency.'"

Long story short, not long after I got home from my post-op visit to the gym on Thursday, I baked some cookies.

You'd suspect, Gentle Reader, that my patience would be slim to none by that point, having been up since 3:45 a.m. that morning, having been through a crazy four-hour experience for getting the boy's adenoids removed and then having run (albeit painfully slowly, for the pain in my right leg has not abated) for 90 minutes while watching the awful The Family Stone (mein gott, Sarah Jessica Parker is an bad actress--and I couldn't even hear the dialog). Oddly enough, I found it all quite soothing: scooping out the dough, tablespoon by tablespoon, onto two baking pans that I alternated baking; waiting through the 12-minute cooking time (well, 11 minute for the heavier, darker pan but 12 minutes for the cheap-ass pan I bought when I was a freshman in college but manages to bake the best cookies); juggling the postbaking resting time; preparing the emptied pan for the next baking go-round until all the dough was gone.

I was dead on my feet when I got around to washing dishes later that evening--after I'd prepared the delicious roast chicken with balsamic bell peppers for the husband and me, which came after the cookies were baked. In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose.

Best of all, the entire batch had only a few crispy critters, and they were from the first pan baked on the heavier, darker pan, which helped me determine that particular pan only needed 11 minutes for its subsequent bakings. Knowing that I'd have more than enough for my class, I sampled a few of what I'd made: It's always good to do that so you're relatively sure you're not going to poison any students. The cookies were a little what I was expecting--something along the lines of an oatmeal-raisin-chocolate chip cookie--yet they also had an unexpected flavor. It took me a few bites to identify it, for it was one I knew I'd tasted before, but eventually the memory came to me: ranger cookies!

If you're not familiar with ranger cookies, Gentle Reader, I wouldn't be surprised. I have to admit that I'm not at all familiar with their history. They might be a regional peculiarity, or maybe the iteration of ranger cookies I grew up with varies greatly from the iteration you grew up with, for I see from my Google search that the ingredients aren't always the same. The ones I grew up with, I seem to recall, had corn flakes and oats, maybe even some peanut butter, but I could be mistaken.

What I'm not mistaken about is that the unexpected flavor I encountered with the cranberry-oatmeal-chocolate chunk cookies is that of ranger cookies. "How can you be so sure?" you ask, Gentle Reader? Because when I shouted out "Ranger cookies!" upon recovering the memory, the husband, who was busy munching on his sampling, readily agreed with me. And considering the husband might have only become acquainted with these odd things called ranger cookies through my mother, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that my taste memory is accurate.

If you decide to make these cookies yourself one day, Gentle Reader, take a bit of advice from me: Be patient when it comes to stirring in the brown sugar into the melted butter. Perhaps it was due to the peculiar nature of Splenda brown sugar blend, but getting that stuff to blend into the butter and yield a smooth consistency took frickin' forever. Countless times I was on the verge of declaring the consistency good enough when the liquid's constituents were still not fully blended, figuring that the peculiar nature of Splenda brown sugar blend would not yield a smooth consistency. But I kept stirring.

That one of my proudest moments of recent memory came from the successful blending-until-smooth of melted butter and brown sugar is a sad, sad statement.

Chicken Soup for the Postadenoidectomy Soul

The boy had his adenoids removed today. We left the house at 5:10 a.m. this morning and arrived back home almost exactly four hours later. Yeah, four hours later. I think we spent more time waiting at the patient check-in and then in the pre-op area than we spent waiting for the surgery to be completed and for the boy to come out of the anesthesia and be released. I wasn't there when the boy returned from surgery--I'd had to make a Target run to acquire for him new undies and pants, for he'd had a small accident once under the influence of the anesthesia, and I hadn't brought along a change of clothes, thinking he'd have to change into full surgical regalia for the procedure--but the husband told me within minutes of his return to our assigned pre-op/post-op closet, he was up and chipper and munching on a popsicle and slurping down some juice.

Having seen the husband through his uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (which can include the removal of the adenoids and the tonsils in addition to the tightening of the soft palate, as it did for the husband) and septoplasty, I had some idea of how to prepare to meet the boy's potential post-op nutrition needs. Popsicles? Check. Yogurt? Check. Kefir? Check.

About a gallon of chicken noodle soup? Check.

Luckily, I knew this chicken noodle soup more than pleased the boy, having made it on a whim a few weeks before so I could use up some celery. At that time, he'd chowed down three-fourths of the batch. This time, I aimed to make a double batch.

Quick Chicken Noodle Soup2 C water
32 oz. carton fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
1 T olive oil
1/2 C prechopped onion
1/2 C prechopped celery
1/2 t salt
1/2 t freshly ground black pepper
1 medium carrot, chopped
6 oz. fusilli pasta
2 1/2 C shredded skinless, boneless rotisserie chicken breast
2 T chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1. Combine the water and the chicken broth in a microwave-safe dish, and then microwave on high for 5 min.
   
2. While the broth mixture heats, heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat.
   
3. Add the oil to pan and swirl to coat.
   
4. Add the onion, celery, salt, pepper and carrot to the saucepan, and then sauté 3 min. or until they're almost tender, stirring frequently.
   
5. Add the hot broth mixture and pasta to the saucepan, and then bring it to a boil.
6. Cook the soup 7 min. or until the pasta is almost al dente.
   
7. Stir in the chicken and then cook 1 min. or until thoroughly heated.
   
8. Stir in the parsley.

Yield: 6 1-cup servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 237
Fat: 4.8 g
Sat fat: 1 g
Protein: 22.9 g
Carbs: 23.9 g
Fiber: 1.7 g
Cholesterol: 50 mg
Sodium: 589 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
This recipe I found in the freebie Cooking Light January issue, and I initially passed over it. But as I noted a few paragraphs back, I had some celery I needed to use, and since the boy had been gobbling down some canned chicken noodle soup from Canada like it was water and he'd just returned from a 10-year sojourn in the Gobi desert, I thought I'd give this one a shot.

Before I get to my futzings, I just have to say one thing about this "quick" recipe: Is it really so damn hard to chop up a celery stalk or two, a carrot and maybe half of an onion? Is that really so damn time-consuming a task?

All right, Gentle Reader, here's a rough idea of how I played with this recipe:

• Screw the rotisserie chicken. What's so hard about boiling a boneless, skinless or even a bone-in, skinless chicken breast in just enough water and then shredding it? That's what I did (the bone-in breast I used in addition to a small boneless boob for the second batch), so not only did I get some nice chicken, I wound up with some (admittedly weak) chicken broth to use in place of the two cups of water.
  
• Screw the microwave. What's with nuking the water and broth? Is it really so hard to wait for this liquid to boil? Have we really come to this, Gentle Reader? If you have no patience, then you have really no business being in the kitchen.
  
• I never have parsley. I have cilantro, but I think I've noted several times how much the boy loathes cilantro.

I had to look up exactly what fusilli pasta is, although I had a rough idea based on the illustration in the magazine. If you're too lazy to pop fusilli into Google and hit Enter, Gentle Reader, let me clue you in: It's corkscrew pasta, or as I knew it until that day, it's rotini. That's it. When I first prepared to make this recipe, before I visited Google, I worried that perhaps this was some special pasta, but no. It's just rotini.

Fortunately, thanks to some reshelving, restocking and deep discounting of the pasta shelves at HEB, I have pasta out the wazoo. I've got yer penne, I've got yer angelhair, I've got yer rotini. The fancy stuff too--the omega-enriched and/or whole-grain stuff. I personally can't stand pasta (it reminds me too much of when I was fat and was an all too frequent visitor to The Olive Garden and made too many batches of cavatini or spaghetti slathered with Five Brothers four-cheese sauce), but the boy and the husband--but especially the boy--like the stuff. Pasta makes for an easy meal on nights when I'm uninspired.

Where was I? Sheesh, writing up a post after being up for some 15 hours is not the most brilliant thing to do.

Okay, yeah, rotini. The first time I made the soup, I polished off an already-open box of rotini, which was just about the 6 ounces called for. Combined with the shredded chicken breast meat, the end result looked pretty much like the picture in the magazine and surprisingly pretty flavorful, considering how sparse the seasoning is. (I think I might have sprinkled a bit of kosher salt and pepper into the water I boiled the breast in the first time. I know I definitely did the second time.)

The second time, I used all 16 ounces in the bag of discounted Hodgson Mills whole wheat spiral pasta I had on hand. I was a little leery of using the whole wheat pasta in this batching, knowing that the finished product would be stored for later reheating and that whole wheat pasta can disintegrate or at least get really mushy and unappetizing when reheated in a lot of liquid. But the boy loves his pasta, and I figured even mushy spirals would work well if he were nursing a sore postadenoidectomy gullet.

Of course, adding all 16 ounces of the pasta to the pot along with the six cups or so of shredded chicken meat made for a big-ass pot of soup. I thought I'd put in enough liquid--I eyeballed it as I went along, using the broth created when I boiled the chicken along with about half or more of a 32-ounce container of Pacific Natural Foods chicken broth I'd opened a few days before when making our favorite tagine recipe. Despite the skewed liquid-to-solid ratio, the pasta was cooked to just the right tenderness, plus the lack of an abundance of liquid allowed me to stow the finished soup in a way that would allow me to reheat it on the stove, adding fresh broth, without those noddles turning to mush.

And my theory proved true. Not long after arriving home, the boy was lamenting how hungry he was, echoing his one of his first post-op statements to his father: "When can I go home? I'm ready to eat some chicken noodle soup." (Isn't he just precious sometimes, Gentle Reader?) I plopped the smallest of the three storage bowls of soup into a two-quart saucepan, started it warming over gentle heat and added enough freshly opened Central Markup-brand broth until most of the solid ingredients could roughly float. As soon as it was warm, I headed off to the gym.

When I returned just over 90 minutes later, the soup was gone. I don't think the husband partook of it either.

The boy had half of the medium-size container of soup for supper. I still have a quart-size (maybe a two-quart size) container in the 'fridge.

Eat your heart out, Cambell's. I'll tell you what's "M'm! M'm! Good!" and it ain't you and your obese, pasty kids!

Disaster Is Strawberry-Flavored

So the Lyle Lovett cake went from bad to worse as Friday progressed. "How bad?" you ask, Gentle Reader? Well, read on.

I considered whipping up another batch of frosting so I could at least cover the top of the cake and recover the sides, writing off the first coat as the crumb coat. I nixed that idea, though, because the boy's not a big fan of frosting. Plus...well, I didn't want to go to that much trouble. I had half of an opened draw of strawberry preserves along with a full, unopened one. Why not put it to use?

Strawberry preserves make for a great cake topping!

While I had the strawberry preserves as an unexpected but very useful resource for this birthday cake misadventure, I also had about a pint of strawberries I'd recently frozen for this occasion and now were largely unthawed in the 'fridge. Of course, do-it-yourself frozen strawberries don't thaw terribly well. They're oozy and can get mushy quick. But I had them thawed, thus I felt I had to use them.

Halved strawberries--even oozy and mushy--cover a fair number of sins!

Unfortunately, a failure of mine at this point came to be a big burden at this point: I'd failed to adequately level each cake tier, so the stacked cake was lopsided. Halved, oozy , mushy strawberries sitting atop gooey strawberry preserves on a lopsided cake succumb to the pull of gravity.

In other words, I had a hell of a time keeping the strawberries for the top of the cake on the top of the cake.

And as the strawberries went a'tumblin', so too did some of the preserves. Thus the cake, already looking like the effort of a 5-year-old baking novice, began to take on a bloody appearance.

In the immortal words of Jean-Luc Godard, "It's not blood. It's red."

Yep, that's cake karma for you. And I couldn't exactly repair the damage at that point, for I wasn't about to disassemble the cake, try again to level each tier, reassemble the cake, adding more strawberry preserves filling as needed, then try to smooth out the frosting. That's just not feasible.

My solution? I grabbed a lid for a Corelle Visions Grab-It, propped up the cake plate on the side with the most downward tilt and hoped for the best when I popped it into the 'fridge until it was time for it to be butchered and served. But even the simple task of short-term refrigeration was problematic: The damn cake was too tall for the Rubbermaid dome that goes with the cake plate. Fuckaroo!

At that point, I declared defeat and retreated from my kitchen. When I pulled the disaster cake out when the time finally came to serve it, the thing was sitting in a small moat of sticky, strawberry-flavored, pale pink ooze, which had also dribbled onto the 'fridge shelf on which it had sat and spilled onto the floor when I removed it from the 'fridge. I shoved seven candles in the damn thing, lit 'em up and started the caterwauling of "Happy Birthday."

By the way, I did warn the boy when I picked him up from school that his cake had not turned out as I'd hoped. He'd kindly assured me that was fine with him. He's not only developing a sense of what to say at awkward times but also how to let some things roll right off his back like water and a duck.

Nevertheless, he seemed quite wary of his disaster birthday cake.

Once hacked into, the cake didn't look too bad. If I can snatch one small victory out of the jaws of this behemouth defeat, I can be proud that the layers didn't fall apart once sliced and even once transferred to a bowl for serving. Hooray for small miracles, eh, Gentle Reader?

The overall taste wasn't too bad either. I mean, it was all right for box cake combined with sugary buttercream frosting and loads of strawberry preserves. And really, I think the disaster cake's appearance in some small away improved once it was vivisected, for now the alternating chocolate and vanilla (well, "white," whatever the hell that cake flavor's supposed to be) layers and hint of red filling gave the cake a bit more contrast. Or at least the alternating layers drew the eye away from the overall shitty appearance of its exterior.

Fortunately, the cake deities did grant me some small reprieve: My in-laws surprised the boy with a dozen Star Wars-themed cupcakes they'd ordered from a local cupcake cafe. Therefore, the boy can eventually look back on his seventh birthday and remember that he had 12 great-looking cakes to enjoy.

Hopefully, the memories of the disaster cake will fade from his mind quickly.
Since it's competing with Star Wars-themed cakey goodness, I'm pretty sure that'll happen.

The Lyle Lovett Cake

Tall and...


...well...

homely

The boy's birthday cake request seemed simple enough: chocolate and vanilla layers alternating with strawberry filling.

Such a simple request, really.

Yep, The Faudie fucked it up good.

I love the boy. I really do. And I really, really like Lyle Lovett. I just hope that the cake is like the singer: Very appealing despite appearances.

Cod Piece

Around the end of the year, I scored some affordable cod fillets at HEB. I'd been on the lookout for that particular fish, even though I'd only eaten it once: It was the fish in the fish and chips my sisters and I shared at The Gage in Chicago. I had no aspirations of recreating that tasty meal, but I did want to enjoy this particular white fish again, so imagine my delight in finding some that didn't cost an arm and a leg.

Of course, once I had the fish, what was I to do with it? Outside of breaded or battered processed fish or "tuna" from a can, Mum never prepared much fish when I was a kid. I grew up with the impression that fresh fish was a hassle because it was delicate and it stunk up the house. How very wrong I was about that, I've since learned. However, that has not exactly sent me headlong into many culinary misadventures with fish. The stuff is relatively expensive, so I don't like to waste it on bummer recipes. Since this cod was a special treat, I sure as hell didn't want to muck it up using a recipe that was a total bummer.

Luckily, the one I found was a winner.

Crispy Baked Cod2 T unsalted butter
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 C panko or regular bread crumbs
2 T minced fresh parsley
1 t finely grated lemon zest
1 T Dijon mustard
1 T reduced-fat mayonnaise
4 skinless 1 1/2" thick cod fillets, about 6 oz. each
Salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. In a small skillet over medium-low heat, melt the butter.
   
3. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant (30 sec.)
   
4. Add the bread crumbs, stir to coat with butter and then cook, stirring frequently, until light golden brown (about 5 min.).
   
5. Remove the crumbs from the heat, stir in the parsley and lemon zest and then let the coating cool.
   
6. Combine the mustard and mayonnaise in a small bowl.
   
7. Rinse the fish and pat it dry.
   
8. Sprinkle each fillet lightly with salt, then place them on a rimmed, foil-lined baking sheet
   
9. Brush the fillets with the mustard mixture.
   
10. Press a fourth of the crumbs onto each fillet.
    
11. Bake the fish until it is no longer translucent (cut to test) and flakes easily (10 to 15 min.).
    
12. If the crumbs aren't sufficiently browned, broil the fish 2" from the heating element until the crumbs are crisp and dark golden brown, watching carefully to prevent burning, 2 min. longer.

Yield: 4 servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 233
Fat: 8 g
Sat fat: 4 g
Protein: 31 g
Carbs: 7 g
Cholesterol: 90 mg
Sodium: 511 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
I apologize to you, Gentle Reader, for I cannot fully remember how much I futzed with this recipe the first time I made it. That's what I get for letting my depression get the better of me and prevent me from keeping this blog up to date.

That said, I have recently made this recipe using tilapia, and I suspect I futzed the same way the second time around: I used cilantro in lieu of parsley, and I only had two fillets of each type of fish.

Yep, that's it. I didn't use fat-free Miracle Whip because I no longer buy that stuff, having realized it has far more sugar and salt than the reduced-fat Miracle Whip. I did sprinkle a wee bit of light salt on the fillets (cod and tilapia) to help differentiate flavors and draw out moisture (if that's possible).

There is one point of the recipe I can't recall how I futzed with the first time: that butter for toasting the panko. With the tilapia, I used a small bit--not the full two tablespoons--of Blue Bonnet Light, but I can honestly say I don't remember using that product when I first made this recipe. Maybe I used a bit of the hormone-free Challenge butter we use for making bread, or maybe I used a bit of olive oil instead. I doubt I used the Promise fat-free butter, for it has too much water in it to be useful in this capacity.

Speaking of the toasted crumbs, here's a tip: Instead of adding the zest and parsley to the crumbs in the skillet, put the crumbs in a shallow bowl or pie pan in which you've already placed the other two ingredients. Removing the crumbs from the warm skillet will help them cool faster, plus you won't have to worry about that warm skillet doing untoward things to your zest and parsley. Plus the wide diameter of the pie pan makes it easier to coat the fillets, if you plan to coat both sides. Which I did, seeing as how I didn't have four fillets and a lot of crumbs, which I couldn't stand letting go to waste.

I also recommend broiling the fish just as the recipe recommends. Both times, the crumbs on the baked fish weren't terribly crispy. Oh, here's another tip about those crumbs: Spray the tops of them lightly with cooking spray before popping the fillets in the oven to help them retain their crispness. That's a tip I learned from America's Test Kitchen, and I find it works quite well.

If you're a bit leery of the Dijon-mayo combo, you're not the only one. I was very uncertain about slathering it on my precious cod for fear it would totally ruin the fish. However, the stuff worked really well. In fact, it gave the fish more companionable flavor than the toasted panko. I had a bit of the schmear left over and saved it with the idea of using it on chicken. While I haven't yet done that, I do look forward to giving it a shot. I think the schmear would make a nice flavor companion to a chicken breast.

On the Side
So nervous was I about mucking up the cod that I didn't put a whole lot of effort into a side dish: I prepared some frozen broccoli pieces. Whoop-dee-friggin'-woo, I know. The green made for a nice presentation alongside the brown of the fish, but the brocc didn't exactly make one's taste buds sing.

The second time around, I wasn't so nervous because I had some experience and I was just working with serviceable 'ol tilapia. That meant I had a little freedom to whip up a side dish that required a little more effort.

The Very Best Confetti Rice2 C uncooked jasmine rice
4 C water
1 T orange zest
1/2 C dried cranberries
1/2 C slivered almonds
1/2 C sliced green onions

1. Place the rice and water in a saucepan, and then bring the water to a boil over medium-high heat.
   
2. Reduce the heat, cover then pan and let the rice simmer until it's tender (about 20 min.).
   
3. Remove the rice from heat, and let sit about 5 min.
   
4. Stir the orange zest, cranberries, almonds and green onions into the rice until blended.

Yield: 8 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
This recipe, from some contributor to AllRecipes.com, claims to be free of fat, which I find very unlikely. Hello, it has almonds in it. Almonds have fat. Yes, that fat is the "good" kind, but it's still fat. Even if the almonds are slivered, some amount of fat should be present in each serving.

Now, Gentle Reader, do you understand why I put little trust in the nutritional info from this Web site?

Calories: 198
Protein: 3.3 g
Carbs: 45.3 g
Fiber: 1.2 g
Sodium: 5 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
I'd never heard of confetti rice, so I have no way of knowing if this recipe indeed yields the very best confetti rice ever. I can't imagine it would if you follow it as written. Wanting at the very least a decent confetti rice, I futzed:

• I reduced the amount of water to about 2 1/2 cups. My ideal water-to-rice ratio is one and a quarter cups of water to every cup of rice. Screw that 2:1 ratio, unless you like soggy rice.
• My almonds weren't exactly slivered. I tried to sliver the whole, raw almonds I have on hand, but that didn't work so well. I ended up with some slivers...along with a lot of chunks and crumbles and tidbits of almonds. Eh, they work.
  
• I used orange-flavored dried cranberries in hopes of augmenting the orange flavor from the zest. That didn't quite work so well.
  
• I didn't use a half-cup of sliced green onions for fear the boy would reject the dish. I sliced up three green onions, which looked to be maybe a third of a cup, if that. The boy's not a fan of green onions, nor does he much like it when anyone messes with a decent pot of jasmine rice. He likes his jasmine rice plain, thank you very much.

Surprisingly enough, the boy voraciously ate the confetti rice. Unlike his father and me, he claimed to be able to taste the orange flavor on the cranberries. Maybe he was just being contrarian. I dunno. Should I make this recipe again, I'd probably not waste my orange-flavored cranberries on it and perhaps add a wee bit of orange juice along with the zest so as to make that flavor, well, noticeable to the rest of us.

If you opt to make this recipe, go with your own rice-making experience to determine cooking time and water:rice ratio. The recipe as written is, in my opinion, a loose guideline for preparing the rice. Also, I recommend fluffing the rice a wee bit before adding the other ingredients, but fluffing and stirring in the other ingredients might be too much for rice that's slightly sticky or mushy, yielding disintegrating grains, which are no fun to see or eat.