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A Christmas Breadmaking Miracle

2010-12-29T05:00:00.001-06:00

The husband's inability to follow simple instructions continues to astound me.--The Faudie
Inspired by The Faudie's recent success baking cinnamon bread without the assistance of a machine, I thought I'd attempt to make my own handmade bread. King Arthur's savory Christmas cheese bread* seemed to be a good recipe for a beginner such as myself--a pure quick bread requiring no yeast should be simple to prepare, shouldn't it?

Yeah, right.

Here's the recipe, copied-and-pasted directly from King Arthur's website, not hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper as I did on Christmas morning (an important plot point we'll return to later):

Savory Christmas Cheese Bread

3 C unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1 1/4 t salt
1 C fresh-grated Parmesan cheese
1 C shredded sharp cheddar, mozzarella or the cheese of your choice
4 T softened butter
4 large eggs
1/2 C whole milk or half-and-half
3 large garlic cloves, crushed (optional)
1/2 C finely chopped scallion tops or chives, lightly packed; or green bell peppers
1/2 C finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes, lightly packed; or diced red bell peppers, or diced pimientos
1 teaspoon pizza seasoning (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9" round cake pan or 9" round casserole.
Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, cheeses and softened butter until well combined and crumbly.
Mix in the garlic, scallion tops and sun-dried tomatoes.
Whisk together the eggs and milk (or half-and-half). Set aside 1 tablespoon of the mixture to brush on the top of the loaf.
Add the remaining egg mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring just until everything is thoroughly moistened.
Turn the stiff batter into the prepared pan. Using your wet fingers, smooth it to the edges of the pan. Make it slightly concave, so the edges are slightly higher than the center.
Brush the top of the loaf with the reserved egg mixture. Sprinkle with pizza seasoning, if desired.
Bake the bread for 35 to 40 minutes, until it's a light golden brown on top and a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Remove the loaf from the oven and run a heatproof spatula or table knife around the edge of the pan, to loosen the sides. Turn it out of the pan onto a rack to cool.

Yield: 1 9" round loaf

Nutritional Info
Not provided.

The Husband's Futzings
The recipe offers some flexibility with the ingredients, so I used a hot pepper jack cheese in place of the cheddar or mozzarella, and I used red bell peppers and green onions as the red and green ingredients.

The recipe does not, however, suggest using anything but half of a cup of milk or (in this case) half-and-half. Somehow, though, in my aforementioned handwritten copy of the recipe, I wrote down that I needed one-and-a-half cups of half-and-half, not half a cup. I've never been great at math, but even I know that's three times more half-and-half than I needed. The result, I discovered, was a very wet mixture that was clearly not going to bake properly. (For one thing, it wasn't even going to fit in that single 9" round cake pan.)

It's moments like that when I'm really, really grateful for my significant other. I'm not always the best at swallowing my pride and asking for help when I need it, but in this instance, I sooooooooooooooo needed The Faudie to come to my rescue.

With her guidance, I added three-quarters of a cup of white whole wheat flour and a full cup of additional pepper jack to help thicken the gooey mess I'd made. Crossing my fingers (figuratively, of course, as it's hard to cook with your fingers actually crossed), I poured the mixture into two 9" cake pans, put 'em into the oven and waited to see what would happen next.

Okay, okay, maybe calling the result a Christmas miracle is a bit of hyperbole. But still. Against all my expectations, the two loaves came out looking perfect. I even have the photo to prove it:

Merry Christmas to me!

The bread tastes good too, though not exactly the way I'd expected. I think the flavor of the cheese and the bell peppers and the green onions gets overpowered by the taste of the eggs. I can't complain, though--I'll happily take a fine egg bread over the disaster I thought I had on my hands. And it was a perfect accompaniment to our holiday lunch of jambalaya and the 598th showing of A Christmas Story on TBS.

*Honestly, I'm not sure exactly what this bread has to do with Christmas other than the fact that it's red, yellow and green. Don't worry, though--if you want to make it on some day other than December 25th, you could always call it "savory traffic light cheese bread." Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

Evidence That Something's Wrong With the Midwest

2010-12-10T18:30:00.003-06:00

I present to you, Gentle Reader, the True Wisconsin Bloody Mary.

I've heard of Bloody Mary drinks. I've heard of shrimp cocktail appetizers. This monstrosity is...an hors d'oeuvre you drink? An apertif that doubles as finger food? What the hell is this abomination, and what is going on in Wisconsin that led to its creation?

Remind me never to visit Wisconsin.

I Make Bread From Scratch Without a Machine!

2010-12-05T15:54:00.006-06:00

The King Arthur Baker's Catalog is really good at making a person think she can work wonders in the kitchen with baked goods. And why not? At your fingertips are most of the tools and ingredients you need, not to mention a few recipes to get your juices flowing.

Of course, what King Arthur doesn't sell in its Baker's Catalog is competence. Competence doesn't come cheap either, especially if you're working your way toward competency with King Arthur's tools and ingredients. But to tell you the truth, Gentle Reader, sometimes the expense is worth it because using quality ingredients improves your chances of success and thus improves your likelihood of achieving competence. You can also trust the recipes from King Arthur because the company has its own test kitchen with bakers and cooks who are committed to keeping King Arthur's good name intact.

So despite my sad history of massive failures when it comes to working with yeasty baked goods without the assistance of a bread machine, I endeavored to make the Easy Cinnamon Bread featured in the Winter 2010 Baker's Catalog because the husband seemed so excited by it. Yeah, I know, Gentle Reader, every now and then I can be kind.

Easy Cinnamon Bread3 C (12.75 oz.) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 C (3.5 oz.) sugar
2 t instant yeast
1 t cinnamon
1 t NaCl
1 t baking powder
1 C (8 oz.) warm milk
1/4 C (1/2 stick, 4 oz.) butter, melted
1 large egg
1 C (6 oz.) cinnamon chips
Cinnamon-sugar blend (optional)

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, cinnamon, NaCl and baking powder.
In a second bowl, whisk together the milk, butter and egg.
Combine the liquid and dry ingredients, beating until smooth.
Stir in cinnamon chips.
Cover and let the batter rest at room temperature for 1 hr.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Prep an 8.5" x 4.5" loaf pan.
Stir the batter down, and then spoon it into the loaf pan.
Optionally, sprinkle the top of the loaf with the cinnamon-sugar blend.
Bake the bread for 35-40 min. or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Remove the bread from the oven and let it rest in the pan for 5 min.
Transfer the bread from the pan to a wire rack to cool completely. Do not attempt to slice the bread while it's hot.

Yield: 1 loaf with an unknown number of servings.

Nutritional Info
While King Arthur does provide nutritional info for the recipes it publishes in The Baking Sheet, it doesn't do the same for recipes in its catalog.

The Faudie's Futzings
Never try to prepare a "quickbread" recipe while also making risotto and sauting chicken, especially when you decide to take on the brand-new bread recipe at the last minute. Rapidly bringing to room temperature flour, an egg, yeast and cinnamon chips isn't fun. It's also a tricky thing to warm milk in the microwave without accidentally scorching it while also trying to keep risotto cooking with a combo of milk and water from scorching on the stove. Multitasking has its limits, Gentle Reader!

Despite my lack of more active preparation, I muddled through somehow:

I did my best to measure the dry ingredients by weight rather than volume. I've got a kitchen scale, so I might as well use the damn thing.
I ran out of unbleached white flour, so I had to add about half an ounce of white whole wheat flour, which I didn't bother bringing to room temperature. Always make sure you really have enough of the ingredients before you start the recipe, Gentle Reader.
The recipe doesn't specify what type of milk to use, but I only have skim (aka, fat-free) milk in my home--and only for special purposes such as this one. I don't know if the lack of fat affected the finished product the way liquid egg whites can make runny messes of cookies that need full eggs to hold them together. These are mysteries I'll leave to other people to explore.
The bread needed 50 minutes to get to the point of yielding a clean toothpick poked in the center. After a first check at 35 minutes, the center was still gooey. At 40 minutes, the center was still gooey. Throwing caution to the wind and risking a burned mess (burnt cinnamon smells terrible and is totally inedible, in my highly esteemed opinion), I let the loaf bake 10 more minutes...and got a baked-through center.

I'm not sure if the longer baking time was necessary because of the cool, dry weather, because the ingredients weren't all at room temperature before I started the recipe or because I screwed up somewhere so that the dough didn't rise at all during its resting hour. Yeah, that's right--the dough didn't do squat. Obviously it's supposed to since step 8 instructs you to stir the batter down, implying that the dough should have risen some because of the yeast. That didn't happen for me, but I didn't get my faudie panties in a bunch. I just...well, chalked it up to my string of failures with yeast breads not made with a bread machine. I must not have fed the yeast the right kind of food or not mixed the yeast and the food in the right way for the feasting and growth and rising to take place. I gradually added the dry ingredients to the liquid ones, believing that's the way Christopher Kimball says is the way to do it to yield fluffier cookies and breads. My memory could be faulty on that point, but I also reasoned that when I put ingredients in the bread machine pan, I put the liquid in first and then add the flour, the salt in one corner, the sugar in another and then the yeast on top, thus adding the dry to the liquid would sort of follow that scheme. Eh, maybe I was wrong.

I followed the cooling instructions as best I could, but I have to confess, Gentle Reader, that I'm a sucker for warm carbs. The loaf could be a total disaster, but if it's warm I have an incredibly difficult time keeping myself from devouring the whole damn loaf. And that's what happened last night: I pretty much devoured half the loaf. The husband had three-fourths of the half I didn't eat, which meant he got to enjoy a smidge of it this morning for breakfast...

...and reported the bread was much better warm. That's not to say the taste was off, but the experience of eating the bread--the emotional fulfillment and culinary satisfaction of eating the loaf was diminished by its lack of warmth. So if you plan to make this one, Gentle Reader, take that whole "Don't slice the bread until it's completely cool!" advice with a large grain of salt.

Final Countdown, Day 5

2010-12-05T15:43:00.005-06:00

I promise, Gentle Reader, I'll be putting up a post about something I cooked really soon. I swear!

Until then, enjoy Day 5 of the Lego Advent calendar.

Dig the boy's beanie. He's hip, yo.

The boy, a one-time inspiring drummer, loved the little drum kit. Naturally, he put it immediately to good use.

She's a little bit country. He's a little bit rock 'n roll.

Final Countdown, Day 4

2010-12-04T19:06:00.003-06:00

Two countdown posts in the same day, Gentle Reader. Aren't you lucky?

Today's Lego creation is a miniature crane. It takes me back to when the boy was a toddler and obsessed with construction equipment.

Now he's just a goofball obsessed with Legos.

Final Countdown, Day 3

2010-12-04T06:55:00.003-06:00

Yes, again this is late, Gentle Reader. Don't get your panties in a wad.

Anywho, remember Thrasher magazine? Remember Vision Streetwear? Yeah, those were my middle school years.... Good to know skateboarding's still big in Legoland.

Get that boy a Psycho Stick!

This Is So Very, Very Wrong

2010-12-03T10:02:00.000-06:00

Mexican Wontons.

Final Countdown, Day 2

2010-12-03T06:32:00.003-06:00

Yes, Gentle Reader, I know I'm a day late with this one. Yesterday was a rough day, so deal with it.

I'm not sure exactly what this little guy is supposed to be. He came with two baseball caps and three swords, so read into that whatever you want, Gentle Reader. Maybe he's to battle it out for holiday supremacy with the snowman revealed from December 1. That could be a fun duel.

The Final Countdown

2010-12-01T06:51:00.002-06:00

Yup, Gentle Reader, it's December 1. Totally crazed yet? Totally sick of the holiday nonsense? Yeah, me too.

The boy, however, is still young and not entirely cynical and weary of the world, thus he can totally be excited about the Lego City Advent calendar his auntie and uncle sent him.

Remember when Christmas or a birthday was something that seemed so very far away and the anticipation and wait seemed interminable so that a countdown or an Advent calendar was just the neatest thing to help you keep track of the days to go? Yeah, those were the days....

All I Want for Pancha Ganapati...

2010-11-20T16:02:00.002-06:00

...are my two front teeth!

Royal Treat

2010-11-16T17:44:00.009-06:00

For about a year now, we've been receiving The Baking Sheet, the bimonthly baking publication from King Arthur. While each issue has been filled with temptations galore, the husband and I have tried only one recipe from its pages--and I absented myself from that task, aside from prepping the mise en place for the husband's nuts.

Until today. I had some time on my hands, and the cooler weather had me itching to bake something. We'd already targeted the peanut butter squares in the Holiday 2010 issue as something the husband and I both would love to try, and I had gathered most of the ingredients I didn't already have over the past few weeks. When I found I didn't even have to turn on the oven to make these squares, I was sold.

Peanut Butter Squares1 C (9.5 oz.) peanut butter, crunchy or smooth
3/4 C (1 1/5 sticks, 6 oz.) butter
1 t vanilla extract
2 C (7 oz.) graham cracker crumbs
3 C (12 oz.) confectioners' sugar
2 C (12 oz.) chocolate chips
2 T (0.75 oz.) vegetable shortening
Sugar decorations (optional)

Melt the peanut butter and butter together. If you have a large microwave-safe bowl, use it and save yourself some dishes.
Stir in the vanilla.
Add the crumbs and sugar, mixing until evenly combined.
Press the mixture into a 9" x 13" pan (lining it with parchment can make removal of the bars easier).
In a 2-cup microwave-safe liquid measuring cup, melt together the chocolate chips and shortening at medium power in the microwave, then stir until smooth.
Spread the chocolate over the peanut butter layer.
Place or sprinkle the decorations atop the chocolate before it sets.

Yield: 8 dozen 1-inch squares.

Nutritional Info
Calories: 75
Fat: 6 g
Sat fat: 1 g
Protein: 1 g
Carbs: 6 g
Na: 25 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
As I mentioned earlier, I already had on hand some of the ingredients for this recipe:

While the recipe doesn't specifically call for milk chocolate chips, that's what I used--Ghiradelli ones, to be precise, which have less fat and cholesterol but a smidge more sugar than the Guitard I like.
The graham crackers I had squirreled away in the deep freezer turned out to be low-fat cinnamon grahams. Did that deter me? Hell no!
I have both hormone-free regular stick butter and light stick margarine on hand, and I opted to use the light stuff. I know its higher water content can make a mockery of many dessert recipes, but in this case, I was hoping the higher water content might help me out if I found the peanut butter-butter melted mixture not willing to absorb both 3 cups of powdered sugar and 2 cups of graham cracker crumbs.

The recipe could not have been easier to put together. I suspect a less-fastidious person who isn't obsessed with getting every last speck and every last crumb and every last droplet incorporated could do it in less time than I took, so I highly recommend this recipe should you need a quick treat for some event, Gentle Reader.

As for the tastiness of the final product, the boys and I both heartily endorse these squares. The cinnamon grahams gave the bars a nice surprise, the husband and I thought. The boy was a bit skeptical at first when he saw me cutting into the big chunk, but when I told him basically I'd made a big-ass Reese's peanut butter cup, he was game. He took one bite and was sold. The Faudie scores a hit!

I suspect my use of the light margarine not only gave the peanut butter layer a slightly oily texture (not a heavy, oil, greasy feeling, mind you) but also didn't give the base layer enough "glue" to stick together forever, for when I started cutting into the product, several hours after I'd made the squares and after it had had maybe 30 minutes to warm up a tad after spending most of the day in the 'fridge, they didn't cut cleanly so much. To be fair, even the topping split and fissured like the crust of California during the earthquake in Superman. Did that dampen our enjoyment of the squares? Hell no. I majorly blew my commitment to tightly constraining my daily calorie intake once I had my first bite of these squares. So if you are anything like me, Gentle Reader, and trying to maintain a certain health regimen, perhaps you might not want to make these squares.

Nastiness on a Bun

2010-11-16T11:29:00.004-06:00

Sloppy Joes with corn. Not corn on the side, Gentle Reader, but corn mixed into the meat.

Yeah, insert your own scatalogical joke here.

Nuts

2010-11-11T19:20:00.020-06:00

The husband took over the kitchen Sunday morning. Here's his report on the morning's activities.--The Faudie
As you may have noticed, daylight saving time ended last weekend. Circadian rhythms were disrupted, clocks were adjusted, nightfall now begins depressingly early in the evening and people on the Internet got something new to complain about. (My favorite take on the whole thing comes courtesy NPR: "How Bush Ruined Daylight Savings." Surprise, surprise: He changed it in such a way that it helped no one except big business interests.)

Personally, I think we should ditch DST altogether and let nature be nature, but no one really cares what I think of DST. I must admit, however, that this year's "fall back" and the resultant extra hour weren't entirely unappreciated. We'd received the Autumn 2010 issue of The Baking Sheet quite a few weeks ago. I'd been wanting to make the recipe pictured on the cover but never really had the time--at least, I never had the time until DST ended. A 25-hour Sunday may defy all laws of nature and time and space, but it's convenient if you want to bake something.

The recipe was appropriately seasonal and perfect for marking the end of DST:

Butterscotch Acorns

Dough
1 C unsalted butter, melted
3/4 C brown sugar
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 C pecan meal or finely chopped pecans
2 3/4 C King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt

Topping
2 C butterscotch chips
1 1/4 C finely chopped pistachio nuts
1/2 C extra butterscotch chips, unmelted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine melted butter, sugar, vanilla and pecans.
Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt; add to the butter mixture, mixing until combined.
Scoop batter by the teaspoon and place flat-side-down on greased baking sheets. Pinch tops to a point to resemble an acorn.
Bake for 15 minutes.
Melt two cups of butterscotch chips.
Use a dab of the melted chips to "glue" a whole chip on the flat end of the cooled cookies.
When chip has set, dip the flat end (tops) of the cookies into the melted chips, let the excess run off, then coat with the chopped nuts.

Yield: 60 cookies (serving size: 1 cookie)

Nutritional Info
Calories: 104
Fat: 6 g
Carbs: 11 g
Cholesterol: 8 mg
Sodium: 40 mg
Protein: 1 g

The Husband's Futzings
I don't have any significant changes to the ingredients to report, but the method of preparation...well, I found The Baking Sheet's instructions to be a little nuts, if you'll pardon the expression.

The cookie part of the acorns (steps 1 - 5) came together without major incident. I do think the guidance to use only a teaspoon's worth of dough for each cookie is an underestimate; the boy and I found that by using more than this amount, we were better able to shape appropriately acorn-ish acorns. And even with the larger acorns, we were able to make some 72 cookies by the kiddo's somewhat shaky count. The real fun, though, came when it was time to make the acorn "caps."

In my world, butterscotch is a flavoring, not an adhesive. I don't think melted chips can do what the recipe says they can do. I had zero luck using the melted chips to "glue" a whole chip to the flat end of the cookie. (Which just begged the question: exacly what purpose was that glued-on chip supposed to serve? Neither The Faudie nor I could figure that one out. I suppose it was supposed to help form the cap of the acorn, but I would have appreciated it if the recipe had been more clear on this point.) Also, I had zero luck dipping the cookies in the melted chips and then getting the chopped pistachio nuts to stick. So instead, I futzed.

Recalling our near-fiasco with the midnight mice, in which we were forced to hand-coat each cookie to obtain the desired effect, I combined the melted butterscotch chips with the pistachio pieces, resulting in a compound I could use like modeling clay. Each acorn cookie received a carefully sculpted cap...or maybe a not-so-carefully sculpted cap as my patience started to wear thin after the first 50 or so cookies. Suffice to say, some of the cookies came out looking a lot more like acorns than the others.

We made 72 cookies, and these were the only ones that actually looked like acorns.

To be fair, the cookies on the cover of The Baking Sheet didn't bear that strong of a resemblance to real acorns either, so I don't feel too bad about the way mine turned out. Appearance, after all, is second to taste, and these acorns taste pretty good. They're similar to pecan sandies (or, as The Faudie pointed out, besan ladoos), albeit with a funky butterscotch-pistachio topping.

Switching back and forth from DST still sucks, but at least I was able to do something productive with the extra time!

Autumn Surprise

2010-11-11T10:13:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I returned from my noontime swim to find all waiting on the kitchen for me to feed them Momma, Bootsy, Felix, Keeko Jr.--and a fuzzy widdle gray striped kitten! The kitten was trying to nurse off Momma, but Momma wasn't having any of it. The catlets, who Momma presented to us this spring, didn't quite know what to make of Junior and were keeping their distance. I managed to snap a few quick pictures before Junior hid between the storage chest and the exterior wall of the house.

Excited and intrigued by the appearance of this new kitten, I dialed up the husband and shared the news. Later during the late afternoon, the husband spied Junior out once again with Momma and the catlets, and he took some more photos to document that Momma was now more hospitable to the new arrival, thus making the relationship between the two more clear. Yup, Momma managed to get herself knocked up again after her spring brood was born. Good going, Momma. We'll start calling you Britney Spears.

The appearance of just one kitten is a bit of a puzzler, but I didn't want to linger on what might have happened to any other kittens. Of course, I need not have wondered to long, for before the husband and I went to bed, we looked out on the kitchen patio--and Momma's new brood had doubled in size. This second new arrival is a dark little thing--a blend of Felix's classic black cat and Calli, who was born in the spring of 2009--and was thus difficult to photograph at 8:45 p.m. at night.

(Yes, Gentle Reader, we're typically in bed by 9. Hey, I get up at 4 a.m. Do you seriously expect me to stay up all night?)

This morning, the newbies were out once again, following Momma happily and starting to get a feel for our yard and their siblings. The catlets are still trying to figure out what to do with the kittens, since they still have a lot of their pouncy kittenish playfulness. At one point this morning, the newbies were stalking each other around the tree, and Keeko Jr. was watching nearby. After a brief discussion of the new kittens' physical attributes, the husband and I have temporarily named the gray tabby Tank since it reminds me so much of Tank the Armadillo of Beanie Baby fame. The Felix-Calli cross we're thinking of dubbing either Smudge or Splotch since its calico markings are sort of smudged on its black coat or look like splotches on its black coat.

While having new kittens to watch grow up is mildly entertaining, I do honestly not look forward to having to tear the boy away from kitten gazing so that he can do his homework or help set the table or get to bed on time. Of course, two new kittens means two more mouths to feed for several months, and our band of moochers is really getting out of hand. I wonder if there's a way to slip all of them some sort of tranquilizer in the food so we can take them en masse to the vet to be relieved of their reproductive organs. Think we could qualify for some sort of group discount?

Happy Run-iversary to Me!

2010-11-08T04:56:00.006-06:00

If I remember things correctly (which is highly doubtful), three years ago today I started running. I started running because I was home to help my dad recover from his knee replacement surgery, was out for a walk while waiting for him and Mum to arrive home from the hospital in OKC and found I needed to go faster when "Given to Fly" was playing on my trusty iPod.

Do I blame Pearl Jam? Do I blame my dad's bum knee? Do I blame my impatience?How about all three of 'em?

I had no idea then that I'd become addicted. I've had setbacks and injuries, and I've had my share of moments when the last thing I wanted to do was get on the damn treadmill and run. I've even allowed myself a few times of cutting my run short because I just didn't feel right or I just had too much going on in my head to "let loose" while running. Unlike a lot of events in my life, I don't let myself linger on those moments. I focus instead on doing what I need to do now so that I can keep running and celebrate more run-iversaries.

That said, I do wish my body and my mental disposition were in such shape that would allow me to celebrate my run-iversaries with some kind of running challenge. But once you've done a half-marathon, a full marathon really seems to be the next big challenge, and not too many marathons happen in Austin in November (the one in San Antonio is just too expensive). And since the 'ol body isn't quite what it used to be in terms of allowing me to run a long distance, I've had to switch to challenging myself with longer and longer bike rides, and that's fine with me.

So this weekend, the bike and I celebrated our respective milestones (the bike's 1-year anniversary and my 3-year run-iversary) by taking part in The Wurst Ride in Texas. We traveled together 64-point-some-odd miles from south Austin to New Braunfels, totaling a metric century. I started off a few minutes after 8 a.m. and proudly crossed the finish line at 12:05 p.u. Not too shabby considering I stopped at two of the five rest stops for roughly 5 minutes each stop.

The ride was a great one, all things considered. Sure, the start temperature of 41 degrees wasn't pleasant, but I had enough thermal gear on to largely protect me. Sure, the constantly running nose got to be a drag, but that's why a person wears sleeves, right? Yes, I ran into (almost literally) my fair share of cyclists whose concept of "Share the road" means riding on the left side of the lane and cyclists whose concept of "Ride single file" means to ride two or three abreast while gossiping. I could have done without the bicycle-built-for-two folks, the mountain bikers and the folks who obviously spent a few thousand dollars on their bikes and accessories but obviously didn't ride those bikes terribly often. And even though the wind had shifted from the north-northwest breeze that had been blowing for the previous 2 or 3 days to a Gulf breeze out of the south-southeast, it was not really a factor at all. All in all, November 6, 2010, was a frickin' perfect day to ride a bike.

After a shower, an attempt at a nap that lasted about 2 hours and a failed attempt to put my contacts back in my eyeballs, which were all bloodshot and irritated from the cold air, I suppose, the boys and I headed to Gyros+ to celebrate with a lamb gyro (stuffed to the gills with yummy lamb), a grilled chicken gyro (tasty), falafel (falafel rocks) and a plate of hummus and warm, lightly toasted pitas. These gyros were my first, as was the falafel, and I have to admit that I'm now addicted to falafel. Are chickpeas just the best thing in the world to eat or what, Gentle Reader?

Happy run-iversary to me!

Need to Kill Your Thanksgiving Guests?

2010-11-03T11:56:00.003-05:00

I think this masterpiece ought to do it.

I think the sprinkles atop the buttercream frosting are the perfecting touch to this monstrosity. Can you say, "Blorf!" Gentle Reader?

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T19:27:00.003-05:00

I wish I could report some fabulous Halloween meal or dessert yummy I made to honor this most fabulous of holidays, Gentle Reader, but I didn't do that. The boys feasted on blorfilicious 50-cent corndogs at Sonic for supper and had leftovers for lunch. Yep, we did this holiday up right!

Then again, we had to converse our energy for the costumed affair. Looking this good takes a lot of effort!

Happy Halloween Eve

2010-10-30T07:26:00.002-05:00

Is your costume all ready, Gentle Reader? Have the 15 pounds of candy purchased for the sugar-seeking hordes of all ages?

If you're not all abuzz with Halloween goodness, need some last-minute costume ideas or just want to coo over some photos of an adorable kid, then sit back and enjoy the show.

Eat Your Heart Out, Papa Murphy's

2010-10-26T17:17:00.006-05:00

About the only time I see "normal" broadcast television programming is when I'm running at the gym between those family-friendly hours of 7 and 10 a.m. The national morning news/infotainment programs of the former Big 3 are as incredibly inane as ever, nor have the commercials really changed since the time I was a kid. "Convenience" is the label they give so many of the products advertised, and now that no one apparently cooks from scratch, the morning commercials love to flog the latest in convenience, "almost homemade!" meals.

Thus we get from Papa Murphy's the jack-o-lantern pizza for the low, low price of $6.99. (At least that's the price in the Central Texas market.) Nothing says Halloween like a crappy pizza with oily cheese, oily pepperoni and a token pair of black olives. Woo-woo.

Yeah, I figured the boys would love it.

But there's no way I'm paying $6.99 for something anyone with a few functional brain cells can do. Someone with a whole lot of functional brain cells and a penchant for getting crafty can really improve on this concept. See what I mean:

Now that's a pumpkin pie!

Seriously, when I get this crafty, I kind of make myself sick. And with pepperoni of all things....

I have to admit that I'm rather impressed my improvised pita stem browned nicely in the oven to look even more like a stem. I didn't expect the cheese to run everywhere since it's low-fat cheese and typically doesn't do that, but I was nevertheless pleased that Pumpkin Face didn't come out looking like Pizza the Hut:

Squashed

2010-10-25T11:32:00.014-05:00

Although our unseasonable fall-like weather has been replaced by the higher temperatures and higher humidity we're more accustomed to in October, I've found myself enchanted by the fruits of the fall harvest. Seeing all those apples on display at HEB and Sprouts is such a delight, and the price for eggplants has come down. Autumn's so much more colorful and so much more appetizing.

Out of sheer curiosity, fond remembrances of a soup I had while at a yoga teacher training retreat 7 years ago (yegods, has it really been 7 years?) and a growing desire to try using my tagine on the stove top along with the diffuser plate I'd bought for that express purpose, I bought a butternut squash. Not only are butternut squash chocked full of all kinds of healthful benefits, but their unique shape just begs for all sorts of off-color jokes about phalli. Would this innocent-looking squash be my undoing? I honestly didn't know.

With the butternut squash purchased, I obviously had to figure out how to prepare it for use in the chicken-butternut tagine recipe I planned to use it in. I'd seen an acorn squash prepared--with the use of a cleaver and hammer--on America's Test Kitchen some time before, but my little squash only weighed about a pound and a half. It was no behemoth and certainly, I hoped, wouldn't not require me to use implements we keep in the garage in the toolbox.

Instead of turning to one of my Cook's Illustrated references, I turned instead to Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. Ms. Jaffrey straightforward guidance filled me with confidence that I wouldn't be reaching for a sledgehammer or be putting my much-hated country blue kitchen countertops at risk in the preparation of the squash. Armed with just my beloved Victorinox chef's knife and a cutting board, I got down to business.

Although pumpkins and butternut squash are in the same family, so to speak, carving up my butternut was a whole lot easier than carving up a pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern. Or at least the specimen I had to work with was, for it hardly had many seeds and not a lot of that stringy, sticky, fibrous "guts" to scoop out. Peeling it was a breeze too: I used a combination of a basic veggie peeler and my chef's knife.

Given that this task was brand new to me, I was quite proud to have the squash halved vertically, cleaned, cut into portions, peeled and then cubed and parceled out into an appropriate amount for the tagine and into two freezer bags of similar portions for later use all within 30 minutes or so. Well, at least I don't think that's too bad for a first-timer.

With the big prep task out of the way, I moved on to the actual making 'o the tagine.

Chicken-butternut Tagine1 T olive oil
2 C chopped onion
2 t ground cumin
1 t paprika
1 t ground turmeric
1/4 t salt
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t ground ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 C fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
8 oz. peeled, cubed butternut squash
1/3 C halved pitted picholine olives (about 3 oz.)
8 pitted dried plums, chopped
Fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves (optional)

Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat.
Add the onion and cook 8 min. or until golden, stirring occasionally.
Stir in cumin, paprika, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, salt, garlic and chicken, and then cook 1 min., stirring constantly.
Stir in broth, squash, olives and dried plums.
Bring the mixture to a boil, cover, reduce heat to medium-low and then simmer 10 min. or until squash is tender.
Garnish with parsley, if desired.

Yield: 4 servings of 1 1/4 C each

Nutritional Info
Calories: 309
Fat: 8.8 g
Sat fat: 0.9 g
Protein: 29.8 g
Carbs: 29.7 g
Fiber: 5.2 g
Cholesterol: 66 mg
Sodium: 782 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
I'll say this right off, Gentle Reader: I got way too wrapped up in preparing the squash right. How ridiculous is it that I was so worried about that? Well, I did. So much so that I made some goofs with the recipe. Oh well.

I failed to remember the salt until well after I'd added the broth and squash. D'oh!
I failed to remember the turmeric until today when I was transcribing the recipe. Sheesh, that's really pathetic.
I didn't use that tablespoon of olive oil called for by the recipe. Maybe a teaspoon and a half did the trick.
I don't do olives. Even the smell of them turns my stomach, thus I have to give a wide berth to the olive bars at various grocery stores around Austin lest I ralph right then and there.
While I do have prunes, I didn't feel this recipe would be served well by them. I've made a Moroccan dish or two with them, and they impart an interesting taste that...well, it's not terribly satisfying for me. I instead used dried cranberries, tossing an amount that I thought was equivalent to the prunes and the olives.
Because I didn't have enough squash to for three 8-ounce freezer bags, I tossed in an extra 3 ounces or so. Did that lead to overcrowding? I don't think so.
I used my tagine to prepare the dish rather than Chive the Dutchie because the recipe's called a tagine.
I doubled the simmering time on the advice of some of the recipe reviews so that the squash would indeed be tender.

My nerves were a bit overwrought not just from working with the squash but also from using the tagine on the stovetop for the first time. It performs beautifully in the oven, but I had my doubts about the diffuser's ability to evenly and adequately heat the bottom bowl of the tagine. I'm not sure if those doubts were well-founded or not because it seemed to take forever for the olive oil to heat up. In fact, it wasn't anywhere near warm enough when I tossed in the onions to brown. I had to keep the burner heat turned up fairly high for most of the cooking time, which I really didn't like. That strikes me as inefficient. That said, though, I did have to turn down the heat substantially about 10 minutes into the simmering time because liquid was starting to bubble out from beneath the chimney lid, which isn't as tight-fitting as a traditional pot lid.

The finished tagine dish was quite tasty, although I wonder now what it would be like if I'd remembered the turmeric.
The squash did come out quite tender, and I tried to induce the boy into eating it by letting him know it tasted very close to potatoes. (He had maybe two or three cubes and that was it.) I served the finished yumminess atop pistachio couscous, but I think it would have been better served with plain couscous or with a side of pita with which to sop up the liquid. That's not a knock against either the pistachio couscous or the finished tagine; The wonderful flavor and aroma of the couscous was lost, buried under the flavors of the tagine.

Battle of the Bread Machines, Day 7

2010-10-11T08:35:00.009-05:00

As promised, here's the husband with the latest installment of the Battle of the Bread Machines.--The Faudie
Yes, I know we haven't played this game lately. But you don't think we'd be continuing our little bread machine contest unless we had a really good reason to, do you?

Well, we do.

Competitor #7: The Zojirushi Model BBCC-X20

The Faudie has already profiled today's contestant, the Zojirushi BBCC-X20. Go ahead and read her post about this double-paddled lil' wonder. All that I can to add to what she's written is: A $240 bread machine for $14? Daaaaaaaaaaaamn. Thank you, Goodwill! From out of nowhere, the Zo has become the machine to beat in this competition.

Anxious to get started with the Zo, I didn't spend a lot of time deciding what kind of bread to make. I just went with the first reasonable recipe I came across, which happened to be:

Homestyle Whole Wheat Bread

1 1/2 C water
3 C whole wheat bread flour
heaped 3/4 C white bread flour
1 1/2 t salt
2 t sugar
2 T butter, diced
1 t instant dry yeast

Add ingredients to machine according to manufacturer's directions.
Use Whole Wheat or Multigrain setting, if available.

Yield: 1 lb. loaf

Nutritional Info
This particular recipe came from Anne Sheasby's The Bread Machine Bible, which has the Donna Rathmell Germanesque quality of not including nutritional information.

The Husband's Futzings
None to report other than the addition of three teaspoons of vital gluten.

As The Faudie mentioned in her post, our Zo came complete with its original instruction manual (helpfully titled "How To Enjoy Your Home Bakery Supreme"), and thank goodness it did. The BBCC-X20 is capable of a lot, but it's almost impossible to use the controls using intuition alone. For example, to bypass the preheat process, you have to press the "TIME" and "CYCLE" buttons at the same time for three seconds. I can safely say I wouldn't have known that without having the manual on hand.

Official Results for Competitor #7
I'm guessing there's a reason Zojirushi bread machines sell for north of $200, and that reason is because they're awesome. Don't believe me? Just take a look at the loaf of homestyle whole wheat our Zo produced.

The Zo made it so.

The loaf came out perfectly cooked, the crust was the right darkness...I even love the shape of the loaf, which simply looks more "bread-like" than the carbohydrate cubes most of our other machines produce. I couldn't have asked for more. (Since then, I've also used the Zo to prepare a sourdough pizza crust, and the machine continued to perform like a champ.)

By now, we've tested a lot of different appliances over the course of the Battle of the Bread Machines, some of which have found a permanent home in our kitchen. But the Zo has jumped to the front of the pack. I'd hate to think this is the end of our competition, but I have a hard time believing we're going to find a bread machine better than the BBCC-X20.

And yes, it scores extra points for being a $240 machine picked up for just $14. (When was the last time you got a 94% discount on anything?)

It only cost us $7 a paddle!

Gross-out Halloween Foods

2010-10-03T11:09:00.003-05:00

Ever been to a haunted house or some other Halloween event at which were on display for your tactile and visual delight an assortment of fiendish foods? Platters of cold cooked spaghetti masquerading as intestines or worms? Severed finger sandwiches? Jell-o mold brains?

Well, I don't think this recipe for individual baked eggs is intended to be a Halloween gross-out food, but the picture sure makes it a prime candidate for your next Halloween party!

Mmmm...nothing says Halloween yumminess like a gouged-out eyeball wrapped in muscle and viscera and resting on...a cheese-covered English muffin.

Score!

2010-09-26T18:20:00.007-05:00

Oh, Gentle Reader, it's funny how life presents you with little gifts when you least expect them.

Earlier this summer, I slightly rearranged the kitchen to make room for the second refrigerator we received. (We hadn't originally intended to have two working refrigerators and had actually intended the new arrival to replace the aging-but-still-functional one that had conveyed with our house. But I was slow to clean out the old one in order to put it up for sale on Craigslist, and we soon realized how damn convenient having two functional refrigerators is.) The long buffet of a design reminiscent of Japanese temple gates went into the yoga room to make room for refrigerator #2, which meant I had to find a new way to hide the three remaining bread machines I'd collected. Which meant I had to finally unpack a big box of kitchen crap I'd tucked into the pantry after we moved to Chez Boeckman-Walker in late 2001, and doing so gave me a place for those bread machines. I was happy.

And then the husband and I went Goodwill hunting today. It's Halloween time, and Goodwill is the best damn place to shop for Halloween stuff and other things because Goodwill saves the best stuff for Halloween time. On a larf, we strolled down the household appliance aisle and, lo and behold, my eyes fell upon the Holy Grail of bread machines.

Yes, Gentle Reader, it was the Zo.

If you're not in the know (and how could you not be, Gentle Reader!) about bread machines, the Zo is the Zojirushi BBCC-X20 (or the BB-CEC20 or the BB-HAC10) bread machine. As well all know, Japan totally rocks at making life-changing household appliances and bathroom fixtures, and Zojirushi means top of the line stuff, even in Japan. Back in the day, I coveted a Zojirushi rice maker because they were slick, sleek and...Japanese. Zojirushi bread makers were raved about in the numerous online posts and product reviews when I first started investigating these kitchen wonders, and I believe that my inspiration for making bread on my own--Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle featured a Zo.

Of course, the $240 price tag was a wee bit prohibitive, and I quickly learned to love my Welbilts and my Breadmen that I'd acquired from Goodwill for a mere pittance.

But then today, miracle of miracles, I stumbled upon a Zo just waiting for me at Goodwill. I hastily rushed to its side, removed the tape sealing the oven door, peeked inside and almost squealed in delight. Not only were the paddles present (a rarity for many of these donated bread machines), but it also had its original, well-preserved, four-color instruction/recipe booklet and a measuring cup. The bread pan was in great shape, and the unit itself hadn't a scratch or a ding on it.

I held that Zo to me like it were my own child as the husband and I finished our rooting and rummaging at the store. I even politely but firmly refused one of the employee's offers to get me a cart for the thing. No way in hell was I letting my Zo go!

I haven't had a chance yet to clean Zo up, for it was indeed used by the previous owner. Given the fantastic shape it's in, my Zo's previous owner cared for it as much as I will care for it. Now all we have to do is decide what recipe we want to use with it for its participation in the ongoing (never-ending?) Battle of the Bread Machines. Stay tuned, Gentle Reader!

Oh, Cap'n, Why'd Ya Make This Happen?

2010-09-23T17:41:00.010-05:00

So it's the wonderful time of the year at last when the Halloween stuff comes out. Once school starts, Gentle Reader, I start counting down the days until I see my first bag of Brachs mallowcreme pumpkins. When that day comes, oh joy!

This year not only did I see mallowcreme pumpkins, my eyes spied a special Halloween item at the end of the cereal aisle at Wally World: Cap'n Crunch's Halloween Crunch. Normally I don't give a rat's patoot about Cap'n Crunch, for it's not a Kellogg's cereal and therefore I have no special attachment to the Cap'n. However, the husband does have a thing for the Cap'n, and since I try to keep the Crappin' Cap'n out of my pantry, the boy naturally has a thing for this sugary cereal-peddling icon.

Yes, Gentle Reader, I bought a box of the stuff. Hey, it promises to turn milk green. What more could you want?

And yes, Gentle Reader, I bought milk to see if the cereal actually turns milk green. In for a penny....

Let the great Saturday morning experiment begin!

For the integrity of the project, we should have had a control serving, but...really? The scientific method goes out the window when two males are hungry and have been presented with the prospect of color-changing sustenance.

After adding a bit of milk (the husband was pouring, so I can't tell you how much was added--again, so much for sound scientific method principles) and allowing the constituents to sit for a few moments (not sure how long), here's what we got:
Yes, Gentle Reader, that's right. We got green milk.

It's not ectoplasm green milk, but it's a seafoam green shade, which still counts.

Of course, the next question is this: Is it safe to drink this crap once it's green? Well, let me say this about this secondary experiment: We broadened our sampling population to answer this question. In addition to the husband, who drank the milk in his bowl, and the boy, who drank some of the milk in his bowl but then rejected it for reasons he kept to himself, we tried it out on what we thought would be a sure-fire audience: Nickelbucket. Good 'ol Bucket loves him some milk, especially "forbidden" milk in a human's bowl, cup or spoon.

Here's the record of Bucket's participation for your viewing pleasure, Gentle Reader.

What's interesting in this experiment is that N to the B will usually gobble up milk once he's identified it. From the pictures above, you'd expect that, wouldn't you, Gentle Reader?

Well, you're wrong. And the fact that he didn't even touched the spilled milk is telling. He usually goes for that before whatever's in the container.

Since Bucket wasn't an entirely conclusive participant, we sought one more participant and found one in Keeko Jr. Dear Keeko Jr. is much like Parmer Dude--very food-motivated. He's the first one to make it to the food bowls when one of us goes out to feed our brood of moochers, even if he was still lingering by the shed in the far corner of the backyard when the person avec food arrived on the porch. And Keeko Jr. is very much like the human males at Chez Boeckman-Walker: He'll eat just about anything.

So we put the bowl before Keeko Jr. and waited inside with baited breath (and some of us with green-tinted tongues).

Keeko Jr. obliged by ducking his head into the bowl and seeming to go for the bait.

But then...well, this happened:
That's one disgruntled, disgusted, disappointed pussy cat. Keeko and the Cap'n ain't makin' it happen.

Sudden Obsession with Morocco

2010-09-22T17:37:00.007-05:00

Well, the title of this post says it all. For some reason I can't fully explain, I've been fascinated with dishes alleged to be Moroccan in origin. I blame my love affair with couscous. I suppose, Gentle Reader, you could dub couscous the gateway dish that leads you down an arduous but damned delicious path.

Of course, these recipes I've cooked up may have "Morocco" or "Moroccan" in their titles only by some whim of the persons submitting them just to make the dishes seem exotic. Hey, for folks like me who grew up on chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, green beans out of a can and a slice of white sandwich bread, spices that aren't salt and pepper are exotic. Authenticity should, I'm sure, be one of my goals, but it isn't. I'm just looking for tasty spice combinations.

Moroccan Lentil Soup2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 t grated fresh ginger
6 C water
1 C red lentils
1 15-oz. can garbanzo beans, drained
1 19-oz. can cannellini beans
1 14.5-oz. can diced tomatoes
1/2 C diced carrots
1/2 C chopped celery
1 T olive oil
1 1/2 t ground cardamom
1/2 t ground cayenne pepper
1/2 t ground cumin
1 t garam masala

In large pot saute the onions, garlic and ginger in a little olive oil for about 5 min.
Add the water, lentils, chickpeas, white kidney beans, diced tomatoes, carrots, celery, garam masala, cardamom, cayenne pepper and cumin.
Bring the mixture to a boil for a few min. then simmer for 1 to 1.5 hours or longer, until the lentils are soft.
Puree half the soup in a food processor or blender, and then return the pureed soup to the pot, stir and enjoy.

Yield: 6 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
Calories: 273
Fat: 3.1 g
Protein: 16 g
Carbs: 46 g
Fiber: 15.9 g
Na: 185 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
I studied this recipe off and on for about a week before deciding to make it. I read its comments, some of which are not terribly kind, some of which are...revealing of a certain lack of experience with some ethnic cooking techniques and flavor profiles and some are utterly useless in their glowing praise. Noting the number of folks disappointed with the final flavor given what spices go into its preparation, I drew on my own experience with these spices and with certain Indian preparation techniques gleaned from Madhur Jaffrey and others and got to work.

After heating about 1.5 t of olive oil in my nonstick Dutchie over medium-low heat, I tossed in the onions to saute. Once they began to soften, I added the garlic and ginger and stirred fairly frequently lest these more delicate "foundation" flavors burn.
Once the garlic and ginger became fragrant, I tossed in the celery and onion to become tender, trusting my nose largely to know when they were ready to be spiced.
Garam masala is not a spice you throw in during the initial cooking stages. I can't remember where I read that (probably a nugget of wisdom from Ms. Jaffrey), but it's meant to be added at the end of cooking. If you throw it in too soon, the flavors vanish. For that reason, I added only the cayenne, cumin and cardamom and let them grow fragrant. I'm still not entirely sure the cardamom should go in at this point, if it can be destroyed by prolonged cooking time, but I put it in here rather than at the end since it makes up the bulk of the flavor profile.
As my nostrils filled with heady smells emanating from the Dutchie, I tossed in the lentils (forgetting completely to pick through them) then added the diced tomatoes, juice and all, and then added 4 cups of low-sodium chicken brother plus 2 cups of water, on the advice on some of the comments. I was afraid water alone would wash out the flavors I'd been carefully building.
I almost forgot to toss in the chickpeas, which I'd prepared myself. As always, I prepared too many chickpeas and wound up with a very, very full Dutchie. So full was my Dutchie that I realistically had no room for the can of Great Northern beans I'd planned to throw in. I'd already been a tad reluctant to throw them in, fearful they'd disintegrate during the simmer time needed for the lentil to grow tender, so the overabundance of chickpeas was just the excuse I needed to skip the white beans.
The stew simmered uncovered for just over an hour, I believe. I can't say for sure since I failed to pay close attention to the time. I thought I'd turn the burner down low enough, but I hadn't and counted myself lucky the tad-too-high heat and the potentially-too-long cooking time hadn't rendered my red lentils into mush.
After turning off the heat, I added the garam masala, stirred two or three times very gently and declared the stew done.

Because I'd let the stew simmer a bit too long over heat that was probably a bit too high with too many chickpeas for the liquid content, I wound up with a stew that wasn't terribly juicy. Lacking a lot of juice and being lazy, I skipped the puree step, put some cold, leftover brown rice in a small bowl over which I ladled a portion of unknown size.

My verdict of the result: Yummy! I'm not sure why some folks bitched about the cayenne used being too much. I found it balanced nicely with the amount of "sweet" flavor from the cardamom. I could see potentially adding some turmeric with the initial spice infusion, but that could radically alter the final flavor profile. Plus I don't think turmeric is used as much in Moroccan dishes as it is in Indian ones. A bit of an attempt at authenticity is good, right, Gentle Reader?

So Long, Summer!

2010-09-06T16:03:00.002-05:00

I do realize, Gentle Reader, that I didn't post once all summer, thus having a summer recap post seems somewhat pointless. But who said this is a recap post anyway? Consider this a "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" post, except you get to see more pictures and read less text. Now, that has to be a miracle right there!

In the slideshow above, you'll enjoy pictures of two of Mamma Mooch's latest kittens, who took to my grandpa's old tractor seat (especially Felix) like it was catnip, along with a lot of pictures of the boy. The boy and I spent a lot of our summer at the pool, which kind of culminated in his passing his swimming test and learning to love the diving board, which is obvious in the pictures. We also took a trip to the Austin Zoo to honor the boy's halfers birthday on August 5. Despite the heat, which had pretty much zonked out the big animals, we had fun.

Who Comes Up With This Crap?

2010-08-31T09:53:00.006-05:00

As I'm sure you know very well by now, Gentle Reader, the boys and I don't eat out much at chain restaurants because the food offerings available at them are, in a word, revolting. But given all the rumblings and rantings and ravings about the "obesity epidemic" and "America's ever-expanding waistline" and all that "scare you into eating prepackaged 'diet' food that'll kill you just as easily as the other stuff, if maybe a little slower" food, it takes a lot of chutzpah to keep adding to the menu choices that not only are revolting but just...make a sane person wonder if somewhere in some back room there isn't a cabal of fast-food and casual-dining restaurant menu planners in a race to outdo one another in terms of revolting menu items.

I present to you, Gentle Reader, as Exhibit A:

Denny’s fried cheese Melt with wavy fries and marinara

It takes a real food genius to recognize the taste sensation that results when one sticks deep fat fried phony mozzarella sticks between two slices of phony American cheese that are between two slice of bleached-to-nutritional-nothingness white bread and smeared with that slap in the face to cows every, margarine. Oh! Don't forget the novelty fries and that Ronald Reagan-approved vegetable, ketchup!

Yummy.

If you haven't been revolted enough today, Gentle Reader, check out the Web posting (I refuse to call it an article because this ain't journalism any more than what I'm doing here is journalism) from which I learned about this monstrosity.
UPDATE
Since publishing this post about half an hour ago, the husband has bombarded me with follow-up tidbits about not only this abomination from Dennys but also about the revolting trend of sticking food in food for one's gluttonous yen. Since he first alerted me to the Dennys abomination, I feel compelled to pass along these other retched (yes, I intended that) finds.

I miss Xzibit and Pimp My Ride. Remember those heady days of financial irresponsibility when people could max out their credit cards on stupid things for their cars? Okay, that probably still happens, but I still miss Xzibit.

The husband also discovered that the fine folks at Wait Wait... are Don’t Tell Me are way ahead of this thing and will no doubt be mentioned on an upcoming show, maybe even this weekend. I tell ya, Gentle Reader, you can learn anything and everything from NPR. Where do I send my pledge?

Veggie Feast for the Last Day of Summer Vacation

2010-08-23T18:00:00.009-05:00

I suppose that in the grand scheme of things the weekend before the new school year begins doesn't probably count as part of summer vacation since, well, weekends are set-asides in my mind. They're not school days, therefore a student isn't on vacation over a weekend, right?
Well, whatever way you want to look at the Sunday before the first Monday of a new school year, I aimed to do it up right (not necessarily big, since "big" things tend to make me anxious, but what doesn't make me anxious, Gentle Reader?) so that it might be enjoyed by all. Of course, the new recipe I planned to prepare for the evening repast I knew would not be enjoyed by all because the boys are loathe to eat a vegetable that isn't a red bell pepper, a green bell pepper (although the boy can be finicky about even these) or a carrot (so long as it's still crisp and tender). Eh, screw 'em. What do they know about good food anyway?

Marrakesh Vegetable Curry

1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 t ground turmeric
1 T curry powder
1 t ground cinnamon
3/4 T sea salt3/4 t cayenne pepper
15 oz. chickpeas, drained
1/4 C blanched almonds
1 zucchini, sliced
2 T raisins
1 C orange juice
10 oz. spinach

Heat 3 T of olive oil in a large Dutch oven.
Add the sweet potato, eggplant, bell peppers, carrots and onion, and then saute over medium heat for 5 min.
Heat the remaining 3 T of olive oil in a medium saucepan, add the garlic, turmeric, curry powder, cinnamon, salt and pepper and then saute over medium heat for 3 min.
Pour the garlic-spice mixture over the veggies in the Dutch oven.
Add the chickpeas, almonds, zucchini, raisins and orange juice.
Simmer 20 minutes, covered.
Add spinach to pot, cook for 5 min. more and then serve.

Yield: 6 servings of undetermined size

Nutritional Info
Calories: 275Fat: 17.4 g
Protein: 5.7 g
Carbs: 28.5 g
Fiber: 8.5 g
Na: 735 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Usually before I prepare a recipe from AllRecipes.com, I make sure to browse the comments to determine if the recipe as posted was found wanting or lacking by other folks. This time, though, I didn't but can't give a specific reason why. I probably just didn't have time since I don't have a lot of browsing time between the transcription training and keeping the boy entertained.

That said, I did futz. I had to, Gentle Reader, or else I could no longer call myself The Faudie because a faudie futzes.

I so did not use 6 T total of olive oil. I used maybe a tablespoon in my old nonstick Dutch oven to saute the veggies. (Sorry to disappoint, Gentle Reader, but Chive the Dutchie stayed in the cabinet because I was too lazy and tired to clean him up afterwards because Chive does not go in the dishwasher.) For sauteing the garlic and spices, I used maybe 2 1/2 teaspoons of olive oil in a small nonstick pot.
Speaking of the garlic and spices, I didn't saute them anywhere near 3 minutes. Do this only if you want burned, bitter garlic and spices. Get the oil nice and warm, add the garlic, add the spices a few seconds later and then shut off the heat once the wonderful scent hits your nose. If this process takes more than 30 seconds, I'd say you didn't have your oil warmed up sufficiently before adding the garlic and spices. For shame, Gentle Reader!
I substituted about a quarter-cup of orange-scented cranberries for the raisins (I'd been snacking on them--bad me!--while preparing this dish and figured they'd work nicely, especially with the OJ). I usually love golden raisins that have grown plump and succulent in a fragrant, spicy sauce, but I suppose my sleep-deprived stupor and munchie mouth prevented me from grabbing the bag of golden raisins out of the pantry.
I only used 6 ounces of OJ because the little cans I buy are 6-oz. cans. I rinsed the empty can out with about 2 oz. of water to get the remains of the OJ out and into my curry. That said, I found 8 oz. of liquid to be far too little. I don't know if I had too many veggies (I hadn't even added the chickpeas and spinach at this point) or had the heat up too high, causing the liquid to evaporate too quickly, so I popped the top on a 6-oz. can of pineapple-orange juice and poured that in. Yes, I know, Gentle Reader, that's hardly an obvious addition or substitution (especially since I had a carton of low-Na chicken broth in the 'fridge), but I figured, Hey, what the hell! The additional 6 oz. gave the curry some actual liquid, and the pineapple-OJ blend didn't throw off any of the flavors--at least not to me.
By the time I added the chickpeas (soaked 'em myself--and, as usual, had too many), my Dutchie runneth over. So even though I had an 8 oz. (maybe it's 10 oz.) of chopped spinach all thawed out and waiting to be squeezed dry and added, I opted not to add it. I just didn't want to be cleaning up flecks of stray spinach off Lumpy (me and my laziness!), and as I thought about it more, the spinach seemed like too odd an addition.
Even though I have sliced zucchini frozen and needing to be used, I didn't use it. I instead cubed a glorious (and aging) yellow crook-neck squash Mum had brought me from the garden of a family friend waaay back in mid-July, allowing me to then transfer the remaining three out of the Wally World reusable bag they've been sitting in on the bottom shelf of 'fridge #2 (yes, Gentle Reader, I now have two refrigerators, but that's a story for another time) and into the veggie crisper of said 'fridge. Hooray!
Because I'd sauteed the squash along with the other veggies, I didn't cover and simmer the curry for 20 minutes. Five minutes or so after adding the chickpeas (they'd been sitting in 'fridge #1 after being prepared at 3 a.m. that morning--damn almost-full-moon insomnia), the curry was ready.

I'd wanted to prepare some brown rice to accompany the curry, but I discovered I'm all out. (Bad, bad me!) So I ate the curry on its own, and the lack of rice was hardly a detriment. It didn't have a good deal of sauce like other curries, and what little sauce it did have I soaked up with a bit of pita.

This curry packs a nice one-two punch: First you get the sweet of the cinnamon, and then a few seconds later, the kick of the cayenne comes. Yowza, that's damn good eats! Now if you're not terribly keen on having your taste buds kicked by a fair quantity of cayenne, you could probably reduce the amount to a quarter of a teaspoon or even use red pepper powder that's a bit aged and therefore lacking in kick. Omitting it might even be a possibility, but then you'd be robbing yourself of the fun of this dish.

Another charm of this dish is its versatility. You could probably fairly easily swap out veggies in this one. Why not have both yellow crook-neck and zucchini squash in it? Take out the sweet potato and add more carrots and maybe some diced tomato. Use only red bell peppers, or throw in a spicier pepper in addition to the bells. Go crazy, Gentle Reader. It's the best time of year to do it because a lot of great veggies are in season.

The dish undoubtedly helped Monday morning go as smoothly as it did, for I had the boy off to school and my big 'ol butt at the gym in good time with nary a drama-queen tantrum, meltdown or crying jag.

He's dressed.

He's excited.

He's got his screwiness locked and loaded.

Yeah, this boy is ready to roll. Watch out, second grade, because here comes the boy! May the FSM have mercy on us all (but especially his teacher.)

The Faudie Returns...and Doesn't Talk About Food

2010-08-22T03:26:00.003-05:00

I know, I know, I know, Gentle Reader, it's been a long while. If it hadn't been for the husband's handful of posts since my last in February, you'd probably have given up this blog for dead. But in an extremely early morning (3 a.m.) burst of monkey brain syndrome, I find myself wanting to post.

And not about food. That's one of the reasons I had to set the blog aside: I just didn't have a really healthy relationship with food. I'm slowly getting back to that point where I can enjoy cooking and not be swamped by a motherload of guilt and anxiety, which is really nice. That's not to say I haven't tried a few recipes that were winners and some that were forgettable, but I won't be doing any catch-up posts. Onward and upward, non?

So why the post? Really, that's a good question. I suppose I want to yammer a little bit about the end of summer vacation. That's right, the boy returns to school on Monday. Luckily he's still at that age when he can be excited about school, so his upbeat attitude helps me not get so stressed about his return and my own return to a less free-wheelin' schedule.

We've marked the end of Summer Vacation 2010 with a trip to the Blue Bell ice cream factory in Brenham (unless you like being swarmed by a lot of pasty white people who seem to breed uncontrollably paired with what amounts to a $5 scoop of ice cream, mark this outing off your list of things to do before you croak), along with a final trip to the pool where the boy took his first two weeks of swimming lessons and, later in the summer, passed his swimming test so he could start going off the diving board. Naturally, not enough lifeguards showed up for work on our final day, so the diving well was closed. But, hey, at least the asshole manager wasn't present to scream at patrons and lifeguards alike and generally make everyone's time there a living hell. The boy and I both appreciated his absence tremendously.

The husband and I even sneaked off to attend a movie on Dobie Theatre's penultimate day operating as a Landmark Theater exhibitor. Of course, this weekend also happens to be UT's Mooove-In Day for all on-campus dwellers, so we had to wade through crowds of overprivileged kids milling about while their helicopter parents unloaded all their useless electronic toys (really, you need that X-Box 360 for college?) and some more useful items (a change of underwear) with the help of returning students who were pumping Lady Gaga on a stereo (yes, a stereo, not on an iPod speaker setup). I felt terribly old as I glanced at the faces of the students, and I also felt terribly happy that my college experience was far behind me and paid off.

I'd worried that the theater might be swamped with nostalgia last-timers, but I needn't have expended that mental energy. The theater, like the entire Dobie Mall (a misnomer if ever one existed, for it's a glorified low-end food court with the requisite military recruiting office near one entrance), was largely deserted, offering proof why Landmark pulled the plug. Seeing as Saturday was its penultimate day, the theater was having a fire sale on its concessions: candy for 50 cents, sodas for a buck and 2 bucks for any size bag of popcorn. The husband was thrilled, although I think he was a tad disappointed no nachos with Rico's cheese were available. And I'm proud that he passed on the bagel dogs (although those might have already been sold out).

Since we haven't been to see a movie together since The Dark Knight hit theaters, we didn't haul down to the UT campus on Mooove-In Day for nothing. Since the Dobie was sort of Austin's first art house theaters, it was the only place showing Cairo Time, a character-driven film whose main attraction for us was its lead male star. (And allow me to say here that my attraction was on a different level than the husband's. It was perhaps apropos that I'd had to work my way through a college crowd because, boy oh boy, watching and, yes, drooling mentally over Sid again just took me back to my younger days.) It opened on Friday and closes on Sunday. Woohoo.

I'm not going to review the film because, well, I don't find reviews terribly useful--unless it's a review for a movie that deserves to be skewered, and the FSM knows plenty of those movies are made these days. But if you want to see a movie with no special effects, no big event moments (big chases, big explosions, big revelations, big plot twists) and not a big amount of chick-flick schmaltz, then it might be worth your while to check out Cairo Time. If you're not into the premise of the film, then at the very least you might enjoy some lovely images of Cairo.

Since turkey meatloaf hardly seemed appropriate following said breathtaking images of Cairo, the boys and I headed to Alborz for Persian. Damn oh damn did that ever hit the spot! One sour note, though, and that was the hummus. It was a bit on the bitter side, and I'm not sure why. I suspected a decreased quantity of garlic, but perhaps the garlic used had gone bad. Or maybe I've grown too accustomed to the red bell pepper hummus we've been getting from Sprouts. That's some tasty stuff there! But the bummer hummus didn't spoil our enjoyment of the fabulous food, and as always we topped the evening off at Dairy Queen with a buffet of Blizzards.

Really, Gentle Reader, it's no wonder I'm fat again, eating that way.

Inspired by the late summer bounty of fresh veggies filling the shelves at Sprouts, I'm off to start work on something called Marrakesh vegetable curry (yes, at 4 a.m.). I'd originally thought about making ratatouille, but I found my taste buds leading me to more familiar Persian/Indian/North African territory. Watch out, eggplant, here I come!

Spaced Out

2010-06-09T16:53:00.004-05:00

Star Wars: In Concert was in town last weekend, and the husband has the photos to prove it.

--The Faudie

So did the boy and I have fun at the concert? Oh, yes, we did:

A Tale of Two Starters

2010-04-17T08:10:00.020-05:00

The problem with having two sourdough starters is that they take up a lot of space in the refrigerator...and, of course, you can't use a sourdough starter for much beyond making sourdough. Here's the husband with an update on how he's trying to put those starters to good use.

--The Faudie

I find it interesting how our two sourdough starters turned out. As I noted in my last sourdough post, the one made with molasses formed a dark brown hooch fairly quickly; in comparison, the one made with sugar has never developed anything more than a pale, almost clear liquid that may or may not be hooch. This observation led me to believe, based on my (admittedly limited) knowledge of such matters, that the molasses-based starter developed better than the sugar-based starter, but it's hard to tell. Both had a distinctively boozy aroma, which I gather is a good sign. And while the sugar-based starter didn't have the appearance I was expecting, it did have the appropriate texture when stirred, similar to the consistency of pancake batter. The molasses-based starter, in comparison, was more silt-like underneath the hooch, and the two portions didn't seem to mix well.

Fascinating, isn't it? I've decided that, when the time comes for the boy to begin participating in science fairs at school, I want him to research different ways to make sourdough starters. Which, no doubt, would result in the same problem my experimentation has gotten us into: too many starters taking up too much room in the fridge. Thus, I've moved on to stage two of my experiment, which involves finding new ways to use these starters.

Donna Rathmell German's always-reliable Bread Machine Cookbook offers plenty of sourdough recipes, including the following:

Sourdough French Bread

1 C starter
1 1/2 t sugar
3/4 t salt
3 C bread flour
1 1/2 t yeast
1/2 to 2/3 C milk

Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
Select the Basic option on the machine, then start the cycle.

Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf

Nutritional Info
Not provided, because Donna Rathmell German's books are also always-reliable for not including such information.

The Husband's Futzings
I didn't see any need to change this recipe. I included only half a cup of milk, as the starter seemed to be providing plenty of liquid on its own.

I won't lie to you--I chose this recipe because it was simple, an easy way to get rid of part of the sugar-based starter. Fortunately, I was pleased with the results. The sourdough French bread was a nice, crusty loaf, admittedly fairly nondescript in taste, but enjoyable enough with raspberry jam. And it served its primary purpose of giving me an excuse to use a good portion of my starter.

Note that I prepared a one-and-a-half-pound loaf, whereas normally I'll only make a one-pound loaf. That was a decision made solely because it allowed me to use up more of the starter.

Did I mention these starters take up a lot of room in the fridge?

As you can probably imagine, I was more excited about the recipe on the following page of the book:

Sourdough Pizza Crust

1 C starter
3 T olive oil
1 t salt
4 C all-purpose flour
2 t yeast

Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
Select the Dough option on the machine, then start the cycle.
Add water as needed.
When cycle is complete, roll out dough, then cover and let rise about 30 minutes.
Place in a preheated 500-degree oven and bake until crust is brown, about 5 to 10 minutes.

Yield: One large pizza crust

Nutritional Info
Not provided, and you should know why by now.

The Husband's Futzings
I added some of King Arthur Flour's Pizza Dough Flavor--a must-have for pizza-making, IMHO.

I've actually made this crust twice, once using the molasses-based starter, and once using the sugar-based starter. To tell the truth, I couldn't tell the difference between the two in the results. Both resulted in a dough that was almost clay-like, much easier to roll into shape than any of the other pizza dough recipes I've tried.

The unusual consistency of the dough, predictably, resulted in crusts with an unusal consistency, at least in comparison to my previous attempts at pizza-making. The sourdough crusts seemed denser, chewier. Their consistency was almost like that of a Bisquick biscuit, of all things. They boy didn't seem to enjoy them much, but Angela and I liked them well enough. Flavor-wise, they were pretty tasty (I'm glad I added the Pizza Dough Flavor), and they certainly weren't the worst I've ever made. And they were quick to prepare, which is the whole point of using a bread machine to make pizza dough.

A delicious chicken and meatball pizza...

...and a delicious sausage and pepperoni pizza!

Having used up a good portion of our starters to make the sourdough French bread and the two sourdough pizza crusts, but still not knowing which of the two was the better starter, I decided to combine them into one. (If nothing else, that allowed me to go from having two containers to only one taking up room in the refrigerator.) I haven't used the combined starter yet in any recipes, but I'll be sure to let you know when I do.

Purple Zucchini Bread?

2010-03-27T14:08:00.019-05:00

It's been a crazy couple of weeks at Chez Boeckman-Walker, and we haven't had much time for posting. Here's the husband to reassure you that we haven't disappeared.

--The Faudie

Angela recently gifted me with a subscription to The Baking Sheet, King Arthur Flower's bimonthly newsletter for all things carb-related. As a nifty bonus with that subscription, we received a CD-ROM containing PDF versions of their 1990 - 1999 newsletters. I cannot describe to you how much fun it is to peruse a full decade of this company's early desktop publishing efforts--just look at all the lame clip art!

Of course, in addition to the painfully dated design work, these newsletters have recipes. And even though I've only skimmed through a few years' worth of issues, I've already flagged several recipes that have caught my interest. Here's the one I tried last weekend:

Zucchini Spice Bread

1/2 C water
2 t vanilla extract
3/4 C cottage cheese
3/4 C grated raw zucchini, lightly packed
3 T butter
2 T sugar
1 t cinnamon
1 1/2 t salt
3 T chopped walnut pieces
1 C 100% white whole wheat flour
2 C unbleached bread flour
2 t instant yeast

Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
Select the Basic and Light options on the machine, then start the cycle.
Check the dough's consistency about 7 minutes after the kneading cycle begins, adding water or flour to form a smooth, soft ball of dough.

Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf

Nutritional Info
Calories: 1411
Fat: 4.2 g
Protein: 5 g
Carbs: 21 g
Cholesterol: 8 mg
Sodium: 241 mg

The Husband's Futzings
I didn't mess with this recipe, other than adding vital gluten.

I don't think we've used zucchini in a bread recipe since Angela made chocolate chip zucchini bread way back in our pre-bread machine days. What struck me most about this recipe, though, was the odd assortment of ingredients in addition to the zucchini--what exactly was this bread going to taste like? I needed to find out.

The aroma coming from the bread machine as the ingredients began mixing was promising, with the scents of vanilla and cinnamon combining quite appetizingly. By the time the loaf finished baking, however, it didn't smell much like either of those ingredients any more. And it didn't taste like vanilla and cinnamon, either. In fact, the finished bread has a rather indistinct taste, with only the walnuts really having any flavor. Don't get me wrong--the bread isn't bad at all. Despite the fact that the loaf fell about 30 minutes from the end of the bread machine's cycle, it has a nice texture and a good chew. (And I do like a bread with a good chew.) It's just that the taste is surprisingly plain. Unremarkable, even. Maybe all of the flavors are just canceling each other out.

Ummm...should zucchini bread be purple?

As for its color--what can I say? Neither Angela nor I can figure out what combination of ingredients might have turned the bread purple. This bread is so confused, it doesn't even know what color it should be.

Wild Thing, You Make My Heart Sing

2010-03-11T18:41:00.001-06:00

Here's the husband with the second part of his sourdough story.

--The Faudie

So we'd made ourselves some starters--now all we needed to do was leave them out long enough to catch some wild yeast and become suitable for making sourdough.

King Arthur Flour's sourdough primer notes that "keeping a sourdough starter is somewhat like having a pet because it needs to be fed and cared for." Well, I have three cats (plus several freeloaders), and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the reason felines are higher up on the evolutionary chain than yeast is that when a cat needs something, it will tell you so. Our yeast, on the other hand, was not so communicative. By day two, any activity in the starters had ceased.

Science factoid! The brownish liquid that had appeared by that point on the starter to the right (the one that was made with molasses) is called hooch--it's the alcoholic byproduct of the fermentation process. You're supposed to stir the hooch back in or drain it off, depending on whether the starter is looking to dry or too wet. I'm not sure why the starter on the left (the one made with sugar) never developed any hooch. Maybe it was the molasses in the one starter that did the trick, or maybe it was because that starter had more surface area exposed, or maybe it just managed to catch more wild yeast than the other one. Heck if I know.

Anyway, back to the conundrum of the inactive starters. Most websites I checked regarding sourdough starters call for you to "feed" the starter one cup of flour and one cup of water each day, but King Arthur's site only instructs you to feed the starter after you've removed some of it to make a loaf of bread. Concerned about my inactive starters, I decided to go ahead and feed them--and sure enough, they both bubbled and grew again...only to go inactive once more the following day.

Understand that this was about mid-week, and I wasn't looking to bake any bread until the weekend. Realizing that I didn't want to keep feeding two starters each a cup of flour a day, I decided to refrigerate the starters instead. I would have preferred to leave them out to continue catching wild yeast, but we can't afford to go through that much flour. Remember, I have cats to feed!

Friday morning I removed the hoochier starter from the fridge to let the yeast get warm and active again, then I gave it a good feeding before going to bed. That's a picture of the starter post-feeding at the left. See how bubbly it is? From everything I've read, that's the look of a happy, healthy starter. Which meant that the next day it was (finally) time to make some sourdough. I'd planned on using a King Arthur recipe since I'd followed their instructions to make the starter, but since they didn't seem to have any recipes that use a bread machine, I had to look elsewhere.

Sourdough Bread

3/4 C starter
1 T margarine or butter
1 1/2 T sugar
1 t salt
2 C bread flour
1 t yeast
2 T to 1/3 C milk

Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
Select the Basic option on the machine, then start the cycle.
Adjust the consistency with the milk while the dough is kneading.

Yield: One 1-pound loaf

Nutritional Info
This recipe came from one of Donna Rathmell German's books, so no, it was not provided.

I have to admit, it was a little odd to be baking with something that had been sitting out in the kitchen, bubbling away for the better part of the week. But hey, if it's good enough for the early pioneers, it's good enough for me! (Does anyone know what model of bread machine the early pioneers used?)

Want to know how it turned out?

It turned out freaking fantastically!

Isn't that a great-looking loaf of bread? I think that may be the single most attractive loaf we've produced. I've got many more pictures in addition to the ones I've posted here, just because that loaf was so darn photogenic.

It gets even better though: the bread actually tastes like sourdough, and a decent sourdough at that! Which is good, as we now have two starters taking up space in the refrigerator, and there's nothing to do with them but bake more bread. Good thing our cookbooks have plenty of variations on sourdough to try.

I Too Get Inspiration From Julia Child

2010-03-08T17:26:00.006-06:00

So, Gentle Reader, have you viewed Julie & Julia? Read--or suffered through, in my opinion--one or both of the books the movie used as source material? Okay, I'll confess that initially I enjoyed Julia's My Life in France, but once the narrative moved past the time when she and her husband were living in France full time and came to focus on when she was largely engrossed in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I grew disenchanted. I mean, it takes a lot of gall (Gaul!) to lament one's inability to drop everything and escape from the demanding world of public television production and book tours to hide away in one's cozy little hideaway in Provence. What a hard life that must have been!

(As for Julie & Julia the book...well, I pray to the FSM that I don't come across as that petulant and immature in my writings here on this blog. Granted, maybe the authoress' own blog posts don't suffer this problem and I wouldn't know since I have not read the blog itself. But her retelling of her culinary misadventures--and other life happenings during that time--in novel form are just...taxing.)

While I haven't yet watched the movie and may not ever unless I get a freebie rental from Redbox (because yes, Gentle Reader, I am that cheap and won't pay a buck to watch a movie), I've read enough about Julia Child to (1) be just about full-up with her and her life and her metamorphosis and (2) actually get one useful culinary thing from it all.

And here it is!

"Here is what, exactly?" you ask, Gentle Reader? Well, isn't it obvious?

No, it's not her fashion sense. And no, it's not in those books before her. It's certainly not in her coiffure.

Here, maybe this'll make it more obvious:

D'you see it now?

Okay, let me make it painfully obvious:

Voilà!

That's right, Gentle Reader. Julia Child--along with her husband, Paul--inspired me to hang some of my pots. My cabinets are crammed and simply too full to accommodate the All-Clad sauté pan and sauce pan I scored two weekends ago at Marshall's. Since the kitchen's crappy fluorescent lighting is recessed in the slightly drop ceiling, I thought, Hell, why not remove part of that cracked light panel and make use of that wall space in the recessed lighting...thing!

A trip to Home Despot, then to (B)Lowe's and finally to IKEA later, I have nifty hanging pan storage. I may never get the kitchen of my dreams, but I've got more storage space--and what more can a faudie want?

Really? These Are the Best of the Decade?

2010-03-04T18:06:00.004-06:00

Today I got yet another email from MyRecipes.com, but instead of a recipe I'd probably never make, it heralded the top 10 food trends of the previous decade. With the demise of Gourmet, there's sort of a wide-open field for the leading voice in food journalism, so why shouldn't the "editors" of Food Channel (not to be confused with Food Network) take a stab at proclaiming the best things to happen to food from 2000 to 2009?

Since I'm an amateur food anthropologist/historian, I clicked the email's link just for shits and giggles.

Sadly, there were no giggles to be had. Shits? Yes. Groans? Oh yes. Eye rolls galore? Indeed!

I mean, do you think a list that spotlights bacon as one of the top 10 food trends of the first decade of the 21st century is really
worth the bandwidth it takes up? Bacon, Gentle Reader! What's so revolutionary about cured pork belly or fatback? It's...atherosclerosis in convenient, red and white, greasy strips. And it's highlighted in the same list as healthful whole grains and oils. If that's not some type of irony (even if it is Alanis Morissette's brand of irony), then I don't know what is.

If you need a good guffaw, Gentle Reader, check out the list for yourself. I guess it's proof that just about any monkey with a computer connected to the Internet these days can be a food journalist.

Where the Wild Things Are

2010-02-28T11:20:00.022-06:00

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

Pour the water into a two-quart glass or ceramic jar or bowl.
Add and dissolve the sugar or honey and the yeast in that order.
Stir in the flour gradually.
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

2010-02-24T06:32:00.012-06:00

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

Heat the stock and keep it hot over very, very low heat.
Put the oil in a large, heavy, preferably nonstick frying or saute pan, and set it over medium-high heat.
Toast the pine nuts in the olive oil until golden brown, then remove them with a slotted spooon.
Add the onion to the pan, stirring and frying it for a min.
Add the raisins, stir a few times and then add the spinach, stirring and frying 3 to 4 min.
Add the rice and cinnamon, and stir and fry for another minute.
Pour in a generous ladleful of stock, reduce heat to medium and keep stirring the risotto.
When the stock has been absorbed, add another ladleful.
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.
Cook the rice another minute or so to absorb the last of the liquid.
Add the cheese and butter and stir until they have melted and disappeared in the rice.
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!

2010-02-22T06:39:00.013-06:00

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

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

2010-02-21T07:36:00.003-06:00

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

2010-02-18T16:57:00.003-06:00

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

2010-02-12T06:16:00.012-06:00

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

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
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.
Add the sugar mixture to the flour mixture
Beat the contents of the large bowl with a mixer at medium speed until well-blended.
Add the cherries, vanilla and egg to the dough, and then beat them until combined.
Fold in the chocolate.
Drop the dough by tablespoonfuls 2" apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray.
Bake the cookies for 12 min., then let them cool on the pans 3 min. or until almost firm.
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

2010-02-11T17:46:00.007-06:00

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

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

2010-02-08T18:29:00.010-06:00

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

2010-02-05T13:19:00.005-06:00

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

2010-02-04T15:24:00.007-06:00

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

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a small skillet over medium-low heat, melt the butter.
Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant (30 sec.)
Add the bread crumbs, stir to coat with butter and then cook, stirring frequently, until light golden brown (about 5 min.).
Remove the crumbs from the heat, stir in the parsley and lemon zest and then let the coating cool.
Combine the mustard and mayonnaise in a small bowl.
Rinse the fish and pat it dry.
Sprinkle each fillet lightly with salt, then place them on a rimmed, foil-lined baking sheet
Brush the fillets with the mustard mixture.
Press a fourth of the crumbs onto each fillet.
Bake the fish until it is no longer translucent (cut to test) and flakes easily (10 to 15 min.).
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

Place the rice and water in a saucepan, and then bring the water to a boil over medium-high heat.
Reduce the heat, cover then pan and let the rice simmer until it's tender (about 20 min.).
Remove the rice from heat, and let sit about 5 min.
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.

Make This Feast!

2010-01-31T15:58:00.012-06:00

Hold on to your hat/horses/ass, Gentle Reader, because I'm about to rave madly about a pair of recipes that don't have obvious Asian, North African or Latin origins.

Have you braced yourself? Good, because here we go.

Roast Chicken With Balsamic Bell Peppers3/4 t salt, divided
3/4 t fennel seeds, crushed
1/2 t black pepper, divided
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t dried oregano
4 6-oz. skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 T olive oil, divided
2 C thinly sliced red bell pepper
1 C thinly sliced yellow bell pepper
1/2 C thinly sliced shallots (about 1 large)
1 1/2 t chopped fresh rosemary
1 C fat-free, reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 T balsamic vinegar

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.
Combine half a teaspoon of salt with the crushed fennel, a quarter-teaspoon of black pepper, garlic powder and oregano.
Brush the chicken with 1 1/2 teaspoons of oil; , then sprinkle the spice rub over it.
Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of oil to pan, then add the chicken and cook 3 min. or until browned.
Turn the chicken over and cook 1 min.
Arrange the chicken in an 11 x 7–inch baking dish coated with cooking spray.
Bake the chicken for 10 min. or until done.
Heat the remaining olive oil over medium-high heat.
Add the bell peppers, shallots and rosemary and sauté 3 min.
Stir in the broth, scraping the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen any browned bits.
Reduce the heat and let the mixture simmer 5 min.
Increase the heat back to medium-high.
Stir in the vinegar along with a quarter-teaspoon each of salt and pepper.
Cook the mixture 3 min., stirring frequently.
Serve the bell pepper mixture over the chicken.

Yield: 4 servings of a breast half and 1/2 C of bell pepper mixture

Nutritional Info
Calories: 282
Fat: 11 g
Sat fat: 2.1 g
Protein: 35.9 g
Carbs: 8.8g
Fiber: 1.9 g
Cholesterol: 94 mg
Sodium: 644 mg

Normally I'd put my futzings here, but once again I ask you to hold on to your hat/horses/ass, Gentle Reader, because I'm not finished yet with the recipe fun and believe my futzings will be better presented all together.

Roasted Red Potatoes With Rosemary6-8 small red potatoes, quartered into 1/2" pieces
1 T olive oil or garlic-flavored olive oil
1 T minced fresh rosemary leaves
1/2 t salt
1/4 t ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, then toss to coat the potatoes.
Transfer the potatoes to a large baking sheet or shallow roasting pan.
Roast the potatoes 25-30 min. or until they're tender and golden.

Nutritional Info
Unfortunately, the fine folks at FoodNetwork.com--or at least the ones posting celebrity "chef" Robin Miller's recipes--don't see fit to include nutritional info with the recipes. That's probably a good thing for the site, for if visitors got a gander at the nutritional info for Paula "Queen of Butter" Deen's recipes, they'd flee and set Google to block search results from showing her stuff.

All Hail the Queen of Butter!

The Faudie's Futzings
I'm getting spoiled by having a Sprouts closer to home. This week, the store had red and yellow bell peppers for 69 cents each, as well as fresh, hormone-free, boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $1.77 a pound. Those prices may not strike you as great deals, Gentle Reader, but they are to me--and I recommend you get out to shop more often so you know what grocery prices are these days. Even at low-price HEB, the asking price for hormone-free chicken is upwards of $3 a pound.

Anywho, I'd spied the roast chicken recipe in my freebie January issue of Cooking Light and aimed to make it if I ever got my mitts on some cheap red bell peppers. Imagine how grateful I was when Sprouts obliged not just with the bell peppers but with the chicken as well.

While I had the ingredients at the ready by and large, I had to futz. I'm The Faudie, after all, and futzing is what I do.

While Sprouts had yellow bell peppers on sale, I didn't waste my money on them. Yellow bells have no flavor, in the opinions of both me and the husband.
I didn't use more than half a teaspoon of salt total. Yes, Gentle Reader, I know its importance as a flavor differentiator, I just don't like using that much of it. My taste buds, long "deprived" of excess sodium since I don't ingest a lot of processed foods, can detect salt quite well, and I just don't enjoy that sensation.
While I did purchase fennel seeds at a post-yoga trip to Central Markup (the seeds I thought we had for the husband's six-seed bread were all gone), I also purchased a small quantity of ground fennel just in case, y'know, I didn't feel like getting out my mortar and pestle and doin' a little crushin'. Which I didn't when I finally moved on in the day's culinary misadventures to start this recipe.
I didn't coat the raw chicken in olive oil before applying the spice rub. I figured between the nonstick skillet and the teaspoon or so of olive oil I put in it before adding the chicken, I had enough fat and slick for decent browning. Furthermore, the spice rub had no trouble sticking to the raw chicken without the help of the oil.
I used about two teaspoons of freshly chopped rosemary, purloined from the neighbor's rosemary shrub (bush? plant?). I'd told the husband to acquire a good-sized branch since I needed for both the chicken and the potatoes, and he delivered--and then some. I didn't like the prospect of the rosemary going to waste, so I used a wee bit more. It's a crime to waste something you've stolen.
I didn't add any more olive oil to the skillet before preparing the bell peppers and shallots. The oils from the chicken preparation were infused with the flavors of fennel, pepper, garlic and oregano, and I wanted to try to transfer that flavor to the peppers and shallots.

By the by, Gentle Reader, I'll have you know I bought a shallot for the recipe on my weekly HEB trip. I'd only purchased shallots once, years ago, for a Korean recipe. Those shallots, packaged in a cellophane bag, were tiny, withered things that I recall not even using. This shallot, on the other hand, seemed large in comparison. Imagine my surprise when I started slicing into the thing and discovered it's like a pale red onion.

It's a real shallot!

In the magazine, the recipe is paired with one for mascarpone mashed potatoes, and after preparing the bell pepper topping, I understand why: The bell pepper mixture doesn't really thicken. It's a bunch of softened bell pepper strips and shallots swimming in a thin but tasty liquid composed of chicken broth and balsamic vinegar. I had thought the sauce would thicken slight, as it does in our favorite chicken with balsamic bell peppers and red onions dish. Nope, not here, thus the mashed 'taters are there to sop up the juice.

But I didn't know that until after the fact. That's why I thought my idea to pair the chicken with the red potatoes lightly flavored with rosemary that we'd get every now and then at the Central Markup Cafe would be a fantastic pairing. Yes, it's not the most imaginative pairing--two rosemary dishes--but for me to even consider preparing some kind of potato side dish is a huge stretch, Gentle Reader. I stay far away from potatoes.

Yet when I was at Central Markup after my yoga class, I found myself buying four palm-sized red potatoes at 99 cents a pound. I knew as I selected them that I could get then for 89 cents a pound or less at my local HEB, but I really didn't want to make another post-yoga stop. Then to top it all off, the checker tried to charge me the price for the "C" red potatoes, those iddy-biddy ones sometimes dubbed baby red potatoes, that go for $1.19 a pound. Sorry, lady, there's a noticeable difference between the C reds and the A reds, which I bought. Grrr.

If you're going to point out, Gentle Reader, that I could have bought some roasted red potatoes with rosemary from the cafe while I was shopping at Central Markup, you needn't. Those potatoes are kind of pricey, and I was looking forward to trying my hand at roasting my own potatoes, oddly enough. Since I'd be baking cookies out the wazoo for the boy to give to his classmates on his birthday (not homemade cookies, but instead six packages of Nestle mint chocolate chip cookies, with two portions mushed together to form bigger cookies, which I scored for a buck a piece at HEB some weeks back), I knew I'd have the oven hot and ready to go. Plus the recipe's just so damn simple, how could I resist an opportunity to see how badly I could muck it up?

When I made the potatoes, I used the lemon-flavored olive oil I use far too infrequently (largely because I'm so unsure how to use it to make the most of its lemon flavor). Rosemary and lemon seemed an appropriate combination to me. Fortunately, I was right. After 30 minutes of roasting atop a piece of parchment paper I put over one of the baking sheets I'd used while baking cookies, the potato wedges came out warm, fragrant and flavorful.

And a bit too early. I'd underestimated the skillet-cooking time for the chicken breasts, so they went into the oven about 10 minutes after the potatoes had come out. So much for time management! But it's not really my fault entirely. You can't buy 6-ounce chicken breasts around here. They're all friggin' huge. In fact, for this recipe, I used two breasts and halved them lengthwise; cutting them in half widthwise would have resulted in to super thick halves that would take at least twice the time to cook as their two thin companions.

Of course, the chicken needed additional time in the oven to cook through completely, which meant my tasty potatoes were cooling atop the oven far longer than I'd hoped. Fortunately, though, they were still pretty warm when at last the chicken was finished and ready to be served.

While we lacked mashed potatoes to sop up the juice from the mixture, we did have some foccacia, topped with sliced veggies and a load of Parmesan cheese, that we'd scored on the discount rack at Sprouts a few weeks back. The baked Parmesan tasted more like cream cheese it was so sweet, so I found it to be a nice pairing with the faint citrus of the potatoes and the savoriness of the fennel-laced chicken, shallots and bell peppers.

I suppose the culinary powers of the universe found favor with me on this day, for my pairing of rosemary recipes didn't just work well--they rocked our taste buds. The three human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker were quite enthralled by the feast, and even the feline residents seemed jealous of our fine dining.

Based on these results, Gentle Reader, I highly recommend these recipes to you. They're not difficult and make for a flavorful meal you could even prepare without shame for guests. Happy feasting!

More Fun With Chickpeas

2010-01-29T06:54:00.009-06:00

Never would I have imagined that we Boeckman-Walker would human residents of Chezbecome consumers of mass quantities of chickpeas. These legumes were unknown foodstuffs to me less than two years ago. Okay, sure, I knew of them, as did the husband, I'm sure, but they were not part of our childhood and early adulthood dietary intake. They're...foreign. And where I grew up, foreign was inaccessible and...bad, according to some folks, morons though they be.

But now chickpeas are a well-loved, familiar sight on our table. Since it's about the legume I can get the husband to eat, I'm always on the lookout for new, tasty chickpea recipes. Thanks to the thoughtful Christmas gift from my sister- and brother-in-law and the culinary wisdom of Madhur Jaffrey, I have another dish to add to the chickapalooza collection.

Easy Chickpea Curry2 C drained weight canned chickpeas (about 1 lb. 3 oz. canned weight)
2 smallish tomatoes (about 8 oz.), chopped
2" piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
3-6 fresh hot green chilies, chopped
1 C cilantro tops, chopped
1 T ground coriander
2 t ground cumin
1/2 t ground turmeric
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1 1/4 t salt
3 T corn, peanut or olive oil
1 medium cinnamon stick
5 whole cardamom pods
2 bay leaves
1 C finely chopped onion
2 medium potatoes (about 9 oz.), peeled and cut into 3/4" dice

Drain the chickpeas in a colander.
Put the tomatoes, ginger, garlic, chilies, cilantro, coriander, cumin, turmeric, cayenne and 1 teaspoon of salt in a blender along with 5-6 tablespoons of water.
Blend the ingredients until smooth, pushing them down with a rubber scraper when necessary to improve even blending.
Pour the oil into a wide, lidded, medium-size pan, and set it over medium-high heat.
When the oil is hot, add the cinnamon, cardamom and bay leaves.
Ten seconds later, add the onion and potatoes, then stir and fry for 6 min. or until the onion is lightly browned.
Add the paste from the blender to the pot, then stir for a minute.
Cover the pan, reduce the heat to medium-low and let it cook for 6-7 min., lifting the lid now and then to stir.
Add the chickpeas, the remaining quarter-teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of water, then stir.
Bring the curry to a simmer, cover and cook gently over low heat for 20 min., stirring occasionally.

Yield: 4-6 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
I can't provide this information, but I'm sure you could figure it out for yourself. This isn't the most sinful dish every prepared, that's for sure.

The Faudie's Futzings
I've made enough curries over the past two years or so to develop a sense of when things are going right and when things are going horribly wrong. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Gentle Reader, but nothing went horribly wrong with this recipe, which comes from Jaffrey's From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes From the Indian Spice Trail. I ended up with a nicely thickened, very flavorful curry that's quite satisfying.

But yes, Gentle Reader, I did futz:

I soaked my own chickpeas--about 2 cups worth. They'd actually been in a container in the 'fridge for about a week, since I'd finished off a big bag of the legumes and then just chilled 'em since the husband had wanted to have some cooked chickpeas on hand to snack on. He never got around to snacking on them, so I put them to use.
I used a can of no-salt-added diced tomatoes. I don't feel horrible using them because (a) fresh tomatoes are kind of expensive; (b) fresh tomatoes are not terribly flavorful and (c) I haven't a bloody clue how to select fresh tomatoes.
Because I used canned diced tomatoes and their juices, I didn't add the water to the blender. The juice from the can was sufficient for making the paste.
I used canned chopped green chilies because I had some on hand--maybe a tablespoon and a half--from another recipe and wanted to use them before they went bad. I'd considered using the diced jalapeño I had in the pantry, but why open a new can when I have leftovers I can use up?
I didn't have nearly a cup of cilantro tops, for I had to pick through the dregs of a bunch of the stuff I'd bought at HEB some weeks back to sort the slime from the...leafy. I really ought to find a better way to store cilantro than rinsing it, patting it dry, chopping off a good bit of the stems and then stashing it in a Gladware box in the nonfreezing portion of the 'fridge.
I didn't use quite the full amount of cayenne called for. The boy has of late taken to complaining about the food I make being too spicy. Does that actually stop him from eating it? Rarely, but he'll bitch about it beforehand or afterwards like a dried up old biddy with nothing to do but bitch and moan. (Oh hell, my son is turning into my late Graga....)

Jaffrey is right to give this recipe the easy moniker because it is ridiculously easy to put together--if you don't mind dealing with the blender. My blender stays in its box on the top shelf of the pantry since it doesn't get much use, certainly not enough to justify giving it dedicated space on the countertop somewhere. I'm not a huge fan of cleaning the thing up because...well, I'm lazy.
I'm sure I could somehow pulverize the ingredients into the masala (for that's what the paste is, a masala) using brute force, some kitchen utensil and a large bowl--but, really, why go to that hassle when you can use the blender and probably clean it up in the time it would take you to even start to get to the paste consistency using brute force?

The potatoes, in my opinion, could be reduced in the recipe, especially since a person's more likely than not to eat the curry atop some rice, but I'm not a big fan of potatoes. The boys, however, seemed to enjoy them, especially the husband. He likes aloo matter but hates the peas that are part of that dish. With this curry, he gets tasty potatoes and a variety of pea he'll actually eat. And any time I can get the husband to eat legumes, I consider that a culinary miracle.

Sweets Fit for a Deity

2010-01-24T17:18:00.008-06:00

Y'know what's great about Ganesh, Gentle Reader? A lot of things.

First off, good 'ol Ganesh has an elephant's head. There's a great story behind that, the type that sends a person to therapy for years:

"Well, you see, my dad, Shiva, the god of death and destruction, came home from war not knowing that Mom had decided to have a kid--me--to stand guard while she took her baths. Anyway, Dad came home one day while Mom was in the bath, and I dutifully turned him away, not knowing he's my dad and because Mom was, after all, in the tub. Dad, he freaked out at being turned away from his own home by some stranger, so what'd he do? He lopped off my head.

"Of course, as soon as he learned whose head he'd lopped off, he rushed out to make amends, vowing to take the life of the first living thing he encountered to replace my head. Bully for him and for me, that first living thing was an elephant. So while I guess it's great for family harmony that Dad tried to make it up to Mom for, y'know, lopping off my head, I'm stuck here with this elephant head. Not that I'm complaining or anything...."

Because of Ganesh's duty as his mother's bath guard, Ganesh is the patron god of entrances. But that's not his only realm of deity duty, which leads me to the second thing I find really cool about Ganesh: He's the patron god of writers and artists. Furthermore, he's linked with one of the great epics of all time, the Mahabharata (700 verses of which are the Bhagavad Gita). You see, Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, wanted to dictate the verses of his epic to someone capable of writing extremely fast and without mistakes. Lord Brahma decided Ganesh was the only person equal to this great task, and our elephant-headed bath guard used his own broken tusk to record Vyasa's tale.

There's a challenge between the author and his dictation taker, but that's another story.

Take that, Saint Francis de Sales! What epics did you record, huh? You just fell off a horse a few times. Sheesh, some patron saint you are.

Finally, what I also dig about Ganesh is that he's a candy freak. Ganesh loves him some sweets. Of course, sweets in India, called mithai, are a little different from those we devour mindlessly here in the U.S. I urge you, Gentle Reader, to score yourself some burfi or gulab jamun or laddu, sometimes spelled ladoo. Better yet, make some ladoo yourself, for it's Ganesh's favorite.

Besan Ladoo1 1/2 C besan (chickpea flour)
4 T sooji (coarse semolina for giving texture, not flour)*
1/2 C ghee (clarified butter)
3/4 C sugar
1 t cardamom powder
4-5 T almonds, coarsely chopped
4-5 T pistachios, chopped
1 T raisins
*Optionally, replace the sooji with besan to make this recipe gluten free.

Dry roast the besan over medium-low heat until it's aromatic.
In a second pan, warm the ghee over low heat without overheating. If it is solidified, then it will melt.
Add the ghee to the besan, mix well and then allow to cool from hot to warm. Don't let it cool completely.
While the besan-ghee mixture is cooling, add the raisins to the pan formerly containing the ghee to allow the raisins to plump slightly, then set aside.
Add the chopped almonds to the ghee pan, toast them 1-2 min. and then set them aside.
Add the sugar, cardamom, raisins, pistachios (if using) and almonds to the besan-ghee mixture, mixing well. Optionally, reserve half of the almonds for garnishing the ladoos after they're formed.
To form the ladoo, pinch off a small amount of the "dough," roll it between your palms to form a ball and then set aside to cool completely. If you reserved half of the almonds, press pieces of them into the ladoo you just formed or roll the ladoo in the almond bits, first rolling it in a small amount of melted ghee, if necessary, to help the almonds stick.

Yield: 10-20 ladoos, depending on the size you make

Nutritional Info
I got this great, easy recipe from a fellow food blog, ChefInYou.com, with some additions (namely, the pistachios) from a similar recipe on Indian Food Recipes From Bharathi's Kitchen. Unfortunately, neither blog had nutritional information for the recipes, but if you only eat one or two small ladoos, you'll be fine. Don't be Ganesh and gorge yourself!

The Faudie's Futzings
As I mentioned in the previous section, I added pistachios after finding them in the recipe on Bharathi's blog. Otherwise, I didn't really futz with this one too much because it was such unchartered territory for me.

Since this recipe was my first chance to work with besan, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when toasting it. I was expecting something warm and nutty, but I either had old besan (I'll admit that I bought two years ago and had never opened it) or burned it when trying to roast it because the aroma wasn't terribly appealing. Maybe the smell was just so counter to what I'd expected that my mind decided it smelled bad.

DK, the authoress of ChefInYou.com, provides great tips throughout her recipe, including this very important one: "The chickpea flour should be warm and not cool. We require the mixture it to be warm since this warmness will help the sugar to melt a bit thereby binding the flour--enough to bind it into ladoos." Additionally, she includes a troubleshooting guide with the recipe for those of us who have problems forming the ladoo.

Such as me. For even though I'd read this tip before preparing my ladoos, I think I might have let the "dough" cool too much because I had a hell of a time getting the suckers to adhere and not crumble apart in my hands. My "dough" was a bit on the chalky side, but I found enough brute force got the things to clump.

Oh, if you're curious, Gentle Reader, I didn't garnish my ladoos. I wasn't going that far with 'em since I was making them for my Saturday yoga class attendees and had other things to do that day. Maybe next time.

Despite the funky aroma my toasting besan had, the ladoos turned out to be damn tasty. With the help of the almonds and pistachios--and maybe the toasting 'o the flour--the balls had the nutty flavor I'd expected with just a touch of sweetness to satisfy. The boys both found them tasty, as did a number of my regular class attendees. In fact, one of my regulars even asked me for the recipe, which I couldn't remember in specifics at the time. Bad me.

If you're curious to try some mithai but don't want to wait until Pancha Ganapati 2010 to whip up some treats for dear Ganesh, give these babies a shot. You don't have to heat up your kitchen, and if you've had a stressful day, squeezing the ladoo into shape can be a great way to release some of that tension.

Om gam ganapati namah, y'all!

Want a Taste of Living in Austin?

2010-01-18T06:19:00.002-06:00

The husband and I seem unknowingly attracted to cities that have an ongoing tug of war between preservation (more like stagnation) and progress. Our time as dwellers of The City Different (aka, Santa Fe, New Mexico, although I don't know if it uses that slogan any longer) opened our eyes to this fight, and we continue to experience here in hipper-than-thou Live Music Capital of the World (ha!) Austin. On one side you have the old-timers who seem dead set on preserving their nostalgia-heavy memories, even though the things they remember about their city have long since changed and can never be brought back. On the other side are the folks who want to drag everyone, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the bright, shiny, ultra-convenient future--if even that future's bright gleam wears off in nanoseconds and brings on more inconveniences than it solves.

Some folks in Austin can't seem to let go of the past. This article from today's Austin American-Statesman typifies that stubbornness:

Austinites Save Another Icon, Albeit a Car Wash Sign

A Year Older, But No Wiser

2010-01-14T06:37:00.018-06:00

The husband's careful attention to detail astounds me. Really.

--The Faudie

Sunday was my birthday, and we'd planned a memorable event for the day: After attending a wedding in Houston on Saturday, we'd head over to Galveston for a birthday lunch at Gaido's with family. Sounds like a great plan, doesn't it? Unfortunately, the wedding left a certain little boy sluggish and (even worse) puking when he awoke the next day. As tempting as lunch sounded, it just wouldn't be fair to submit a sick-to-his-stomach six-year-old to a trip to a seafood restaurant. Reluctantly, we packed up and headed back to Austin with the boy attempting to convalesce in the back seat. (Just how sick was he? Well, he's fine now, but he felt so bad on the trip home that he couldn't even play LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga on his Nintendo DS. So yeah, he wasn't feeling well.)

Thus it was that we ended up back at home instead of at a table at Gaido's eating fresh snapper. And what can you do when your lunch plans fall through? You bake some bread, of course!

With more free time on my hands for my birthday than I'd anticipated, I started leafing through our bread machine cookbooks for a recipe that could be prepared with ingredients on hand. I ended up picking this one from Bread Machine Bounty:

Wheat 'n' Seed Bread

3/4 C plus 2 T milk
1 T honey
1 1/2 t shortening
1 1/3 C whole wheat flour
2/3 C bread flour
1/4 C sunflower seeds
4 t sesame seed
1 t poppy seed
1/2 t salt
1 t active dry yeast or bread machine yeast

Add the ingredients to the machine according to the manufacturer's directions, adding the sunflower seeds, sesame seed and poppy seed with the flour.
Select the Wheat cycle on the machine, and then press the Start button.

Yield: One 1-pound loaf

Nutritional Info
Calories: 81
Fat: 3 g
Protein: 3 g
Carbs: 14 g
Cholesterol: 1 mg
Sodium: 74 mg

The Husband's Futzings
One particular ingredient caught my attention when I was considering this recipe, and that ingredient was the shortening. I wasn't even sure we had any shortening in the house, but Angela assured me we did (though for what purpose, I have no idea). As you can probably surmise from the recipes on this blog, we don't do a lot of cooking involving shortening. [I bought some Crisco sticks ages ago--I think when we were still apartment dwellers--but I don't remember why. And we don't do any cooking that calls for Crisco. I consumed enough of that atherosclerosis-inducing colloidal complex as a youth, thank you very much. --The Faudie] Probably due to my unfamiliarity with this item, I didn't pay much attention to the fact that our leftover shortening was giving off a particularly sour odor. Does anyone know if shortening can go bad? Because if it does, then ours did. But I didn't know this at the time, and I proceeded to use the expired ingredient for this loaf of bread.

Oh, and I accidentally used one-and-a-half tablespoons rather than one-and-a-half teaspoons. That, I admit, may also have had an affect on the recipe. (As it says in the title above, I may be a year older, but no wiser.)

If you haven't guessed already, this particular loaf did not come out well. Oh, I'm sure it looks fine in the pictures, but trust me, of all the breads we've made with our machines, this one's the worst. It has an overpoweringly odd taste; Angela describes it as "bitter," but she's being charitable, I think. It probably doesn't help that the seeds used for this bread--sunflower, sesame and poppy--aren't terribly flavorful and probably don't have much chance of leaving an impression against an overly generous amount of expired shortening. The seeds that go into my favorite six-seed bread are much more flavorful.

Bad, bitter bread

I honestly haven't eaten any of the bread since trying the first, disappointing slice. The bread just tastes strange. It's bad enough to make you as sick as...well, as sick as the kiddo after a wedding celebration.

Such Promise...and Such Disappointment

2010-01-13T16:53:00.004-06:00

After day after day of turkey-based meals, the boys were overjoyed when I decided to prepare a different source for protein last night. Granted, said protein source was still in the fowl family--chicken--but I've yet to have either human male here at Chez Boeckman-Walker turn down chicken.

To mark the return of everyone's favorite barnyard poultry to our table, I decided to prepare a new recipe, which I'd received just that morning in my daily dispatch from AllRecipes.com. It seemed like a promise flavor combination, and none of the ingredients seemed like they'd offend the boy's gustatory sensibilities (the husband, upon my showing him the recipe, was behind it wholeheartedly).

Such promise....

Cinnamon and Lime Chicken Fajitas4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
1 T ground cinnamon
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
2 large baking potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/4 C canola oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 large garlic clove, peeled and minced
1 T chopped jalapeño peppers
1 lime, juiced
12 6" corn tortillas, warmed

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Place the potatoes in a shallow baking dish, drizzle about half of the oil over them, and then season them with salt.
Bake the potatoes until tender (30 to 40 min.).
Season the chicken with the cinnamon, salt and pepper, and then arrange it in a separate baking dish.
Bake the chicken until it's no longer pink and its juices run clear (30 min.).
Let the chicken cool and then shred it.
Heat the remaining oil in a skillet over medium heat.
Saute the onion and garlic until tender.
Mix in the shredded chicken, chopped jalapeños and lime juice, and then cook until heated through.
Serve the chicken and potatoes on warmed tortillas.

Yield: 6 servings

Nutritional Info
I'm not sure this information is terribly accurate. Check out that sodium total! Did I miss the part about serving a cow's salt block on a tortilla?

Calories: 395
Fat: 12.9 g
Protein: 22.3 g
Carbs: 49.5 g
Fiber: 7.4 g
Na: 1,234 mg
Cholesterol: 45 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Having lived in Texas now some 13 years, I must confess that I'm accustomed to seeing strips of meat that are maybe half an inch thick and one to two inches long used for fajitas. Shredded meat--or so I've observed--is used more commonly in enchiladas and maybe some burritos of lesser quality, but not for fajitas. Part of the joy of fajitas, it strikes me, is the meat that's still sizzling and smoking from its time on the grill when it's brought to you for assembly.

But, hey, not everyone lives in Texas nor has everyone lived in Texas at some point, so not everyone has the relatively same experience I have with fajitas. Or maybe I'm the one with the skewed sense of how meat's used in Tex-Mex dishes. Eh.

Would it surprise you then, Gentle Reader, that I didn't make fajitas from this recipe? That I didn't shred the chicken? That I really didn't do anything as indicated in the recipe?

I didn't think so. Here's what I did:

Forget the potatoes. These aren't breakfast tacos!
Forget seasoning the chicken with oil. After I cubed the two chicken breasts, I tossed them into a Ziplock, dumped in the tablespoon of cinnamon, sealed the bag, did my best impression of a Shake 'n Bake commercial and then tossed that puppy in the refrigerator for an hour-long chill.
Forget baking anything. I cooked the chicken in the same skillet with the sauted onions and garlic.
Forget cooking the onions and garlic at the same time. I tossed the onions in the skillet once the wee bit of canola oil was warm enough, sprinkled them with a little cumin and let them saute for a while before I added the garlic. Once it was fragrant, then I added the chicken. Once the chicken was cooked through, I add the peppers and lime juice, holding off on the juice until the last minute.
Forget the jalapeños. While I do have a can of diced ones in my pantry, I already had an opened can of diced green chiles. Not wanting to potentially offend the boy's palate with a pepper with a little heat, I used the green chiles.
Forget the tortillas. I served this concoction on a bed of jasmine rice.

A mouthwatering aroma filled the kitchen while I was preparing this dish, but the fragrance and flavor didn't really zing in the finished product. I could detect the cinnamon for sure, and there was a hint of lime, but neither one really popped. As for the peppers, I really sort of wasted them in this dish because they completely disappeared. For all the flavorful ingredients that go into its preparation, I found the dish sort of bland.

The husband, on the other hand, thought the meal was rather tasty. I think the boy liked it well enough. At least we didn't have to tussle over whether or not he was going to finish his serving, which is usually a sign that he finds a recipe enough to his liking.

I'm not sure how to "fix" this dish. More lime juice, perhaps adding it to the cinnamon in the bag for the marinade? I'd considered that but was afraid that the citrus would then overpower the cinnamon. More heat, such as from jalapeños? Maybe. Maybe not. I really don't have enough interest in this recipe to explore it further.

Lipstick on a Pig

2010-01-09T05:57:00.009-06:00

No, Gentle Reader, this isn't a rant about a certain imbecilic former governor of Alaska. It's about leftovers. Lots of leftovers. No matter how you dress 'em up, they're still leftovers--just like putting lipstick on a pig doesn't disguise the fact that it's a pig.

When the husband brought home his poultry prize, I warned that he and the boy would be eating lots of turkey sandwiches after December 25. Lots of turkey sandwiches. Not surprisingly, that seemed to suit him and the boy just fine at the time.

To help the eating 'o the leftover turkey sandwiches, I even bought (for the first time in many, many months) two loaves of bread and some Lawry's season salt. I'm not sure, Gentle Reader, if you have the tradition of leftover turkey on sandwich bread slathered with Miracle Whip and sprinkled with Lawry's, but that's the tradition in my family, and it's one the husband was introduced to years ago and latched on to quite fervently. The turkey drought at Chez Boeckman-Walker had him quite anxious for some Lawry's-sprinkled turkey sandwiches.

Naturally, after the first one, the lipstick was off the pig. The boy barely made it through his first sandwich and refused to eat more.

Which left me still with some 16 pounds of leftover turkey meat. Joy.

Of the two big tubs of meat, one was filled with the two large breast portions, which I figured I could make up nicely with turkey highlighted. The other tub was filled with dark meat and other white meat morsels, and that stuff I knew I'd have to disguise in some manner. So to the Internet I went! But after finding only a few appealing possibilities on MyRecipes.com and AllRecipes.com (turkey and pasta seems to be a popular combination, but the thought of which causes my stomach to churn). I turned then to my shelf of cookbooks in the kitchen, pulling first, surprise surprise, The New Best Recipe from good 'ol Christopher Kimball.

I Heart Christopher Kimball

This giant tome has not been as useful as I thought it would be when I got it for a song nearly two years ago, and in the turkey department, it was a letdown. Want several variations on a turkey brine? The New Best Recipe can provide! Want an interesting use for leftover turkey? Eh, look elsewhere.

"Elsewhere" happened to be the chicken section of the book. Since the recipe I'd followed for the bird the first time was a modified chicken recipe, why not see what Kimball & Co. could offer for chicken?

Sure enough, I found a poorly formatted India-inspired variation on the main recipe for one-dish chicken and rice that I thought would suit the palates of us human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker. In fact, I figured those breast portions would be highlighted nicely by this dish.

Chicken and Rice, Indian Style1 whole chicken (3-4 lb.)
Salt
Ground black pepper
2 T olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped fine
3 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press
2 medium green bell peppers, cored, seeded and cut into medium dice
3" cinnamon stick
1 t ground turmeric
1 t ground coriander
1 t ground cumin
1 1/2 C long-grain white rice
14.5 oz. diced tomatoes
1/2 C tomato juice drained from diced tomatoes
1/2 C dry white wine
2 C water

Rinse and pat dry the chicken, then remove the giblets and wings and cut the chicken into 8 pieces.
Sprinkle the chicken pieces liberally on both sides with salt and pepper.
Heat the oil until it shimmers in a large, nonreactive Dutch oven over high heat.
Add the chicken to the pot, skin-side down, and cook without moving the pieces until well browned (about 6 min.), then turn over and let the other side cook without moving until it too is well browned (about 6 more min.).
Remove the browned chicken to a plate and keep warm.
Pour all but 2 tablespoons of the fat from the pan, then return it to the burner and reduce the heat to medium.
Add the cinnamon stick and saute, stirring with a wooden spoon, until it unfurls (about 15 sec.).
Add the onion and bell peppers and saute, stirring frequently, until softened (5-6 min.).
Add the garlic and then the turmeric, coriander and cumin and saute until fragrant (about 1 min.).
Stir in the rice and cook, stirring frequently, until the grains are coated and glistening (about 1 min.).
Stir in the tomatoes, reserved tomato juice, water and one teaspoon of salt, then scrape the frond off the bottom of the pot with the wooden spoon.
Return the chicken thighs and legs to the pot, bring it to a boil reduce the heat to low, cover and let simmer gently for 15 min.
Add the chicken breast pieces to the pot, then gently stir the ingredients until the rice is thoroughly mixed.
Return the lid to the pot and allow the contents to simmer until the rice and chicke are tender (10-15 min.).

Yield: 4 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
Here's one of my bigger disappointments about The New Best Recipe, other than the dearth of recipes I really want to make: It contains no nutritional information. If we want to get people back into their kitchens and cooking for themselves as a means of helping them eat better, then this information is really important. Oh well.

The Faudie's Futzings
Right off the bat, Gentle Reader, the big 'ol futzing that's most obvious is that I used roasted turkey breast in lieu of raw chicken meat. Did that majorly change up the recipe?

If you were expecting a "You betcha!" here, Gentle Reader, go hurt yourself. Painfully.

Actually, the use of the cooked meat didn't really change how I prepared the recipe. I did dramatically reduce the amount of olive oil: Maybe a teaspoon I used, I think. The first time I made this recipe (I had enough breast meat to make it twice), I used a nonstick Dutchie, so there was no frond to scrape. The second time, though, I got out Chive, and a bit of a frond formed.

I do believe the estimated times for some cooking milestones in this recipe are off. For example, I needed a few minutes for my cinnamon stick to unfurl both times, not a mere 15 seconds. Perhaps I didn't have my pot hot enough. Instead of a minute for the spices to become fragrant, I only needed about 15 seconds. Perhaps Christopher uses cheap spices.

One word of warning if you choose to make this recipe: Don't strictly follow the recipe for adding liquid to cook the rice in. The first time around, I didn't use the full two cups of water because my can of diced tomatoes was juicier than anticipated, even after I'd drained it and had the half-cup reserve liquid. That additional "hidden" liquid combined with the half-cup of wine and maybe a cup of water was enough to relatively cover the rice and cooked turkey hunks I threw in. The second time, though, my tomatoes weren't as juicy, and I needed probably a smidge more than two cups of water. Of course, the second time I think I added a whole lot more turkey meat, so if you use cooked meat that might be a little dry and might not release much moisture as it cooks, consider adding a smidge more water. In other words, Gentle Reader, eyeball it!

The result is a very hearty, mildly sweet and spicy dish that seems more like a distant American cousin of a traditional Mogul pulao or biryani than an Indian-inspired take on that mushy abomination formed when cream of mushroom soup meets 3-minute rice and chunk chicken. You could probably kick up the heat of the dish by swapping out one of the bells for a spicier pepper, or maybe you could throw in a bit of cayenne or hot paprika. I think this dish definitely has lots of futzing potential.

Turkey in the Straw! Ha ha ha! Turkey in Disguise! Hi hi hi!
The pulao-esque turkey and rice dish, twice made, by and large took care of one big tub of leftover turkey. What's a faudie to do with a second big tub of dark meat and assorted bits of white meat that will not be going towards sandwiches, even under threat of death?

Drown it in liquid, throw in a good amount of tomato goo and pray, Gentle Reader.

Southwestern Turkey Soup1 1/2 C shredded cooked turkey
4 C vegetable broth
28 oz. whole peeled tomatoes
4 oz. chopped green chiles
2 roma tomatoes, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 T lime juice
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1/2 t ground cumin
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and diced
1/2 t dried cilantro
1 C shredded Monterey Jack cheese

In a large pot over medium heat, combine the turkey, broth, canned tomatoes, green chiles, fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic and lime juice.
Add the cayenne, cumin, salt and pepper.
Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and let simmer 15 to 20 min.
Stir in the avocado and cilantro, then let simmer until slightly thickened (15 to 20 more min.).
Spoon the soup into serving bowls, and top with shredded cheese.

Yield: 8 servings of an unknown size

Nutritional Info
As this recipe comes from a user of AllRecipes.com, I'm not terribly confident in this information. Plus it reflects the use of full-fat, full-sodium and other less health-conscious products, so it's not terribly accurate for how I prepared it.

Calories: 184
Fat: 9.8 g
Protein: 13.5 g
Carbs: 11.9 g
Fiber: 3.8 g
Na: 632 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
The directions for preparing the soup are, in a word, simplistic. Granted, there's nothing necessarily wrong with them, as I've learned from listening to The Splendid Table (the episode from November 7, to be precise). The recipe follows one of three basic foundations for creating a soup: Simmer everything in liquid without sautéing to yield clear, true flavors. The other two methods are (a) slowly stewing onions and key ingredients, such as herbs, in a little fat in a covered pot over low heat to yield mellow flavors and (b) quickly browning onions and some of the vegetables in good-tasting oil or butter over medium-high heat to yield bold and sturdy flavors.

Since I'm creating a spicy soup, I want flavors bold and brassy so they can disguise the less desirable turkey meat bits floating in the juice. If you want the same, Gentle Reader, here's what to do:

Heat a wee bit of olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.
Toss in the onions, sprinkle with half a teaspoon or so of cumin (the amount will depend on how much diced onion you have to brown and how much you like the flavor of cumin) and then sauté.
As the onions begin to soften, toss in the garlic and sauté until lightly fragrant (probably no more than 30 sec., but the quality of your garlic could impact this time).
Add the broth, tomatoes, turkey, chiles and spices, stirring well to blend, and then bring the ingredients to a gentle simmer.
Once the ingredients are heated through, add the lime juice and stir.

As you may have noticed, I make no mention of avocado or cheese or cilantro or salt and pepper. I didn't use them in either batch of soup I made, although I would have used some freshly chopped cilantro atop my own bowl if I'd remembered to mince it before the soup was ready. In addition to these omissions, here are some other futzings I made:

I reduced the amount of cayenne to 1/4 teaspoon because I know that amount is enough heat for the boy...and probably for me as well. Half a teaspoon of the stuff seems excessive--heat for heat's sake. Like those asinine chili cook-offs at which macho types see who can prepare and ingest the most hellishly hot chili, not to determine which chili tastes the best but to see which person's taste buds and GI tract can withstand that much capsaicin and other flavor building blocks. Spare me, please.
I added a bag (20 ounces, I think) of HEB frozen super sweet corn. I kid you not about the product name, Gentle Reader: This corn was teeth-achingly sweet, just a notch or two below candy corn in terms of sugary sweetness. That said, it served as a nice counterpoint to the heat.
I used chicken broth instead of veggie broth, and I can't say how much of it I used either time because I was eyeballing the ratio of liquids and liquid-yielding solids to overall solids (more on this in a moment). I do recall using a bit of water when I prepared the first batch because I'd polished off what was left of the already-open chicken broth container and needed a wee bit more moisture, so I poured a bit of water into the empty broth container to collect any residue seasoning remaining and then dumped that into the pot.
The first time I used three or four canned roma tomatoes and their juices left from the can I'd opened when I made the spicy rice on December 25. I had to break them up as I cooked them, which was a total pain in the rump to do with a 25-cent wooden spoon. The second time around, I used a can or two of no-salt-added diced tomatoes. They worked much better than the whole tomatoes.

I used well more than a cup and a half of shredded leftover turkey in both batches of soup, and the 20 ounces of corn certainly added a lot more to the pot, so just as I did with the Indian-inspired turkey and rice dish, I eyeballed the amount of liquid in the pot as the soup cooked. The second batch turned out to be a little less soupy for two reasons: (1) I probably used four cups of turkey meat just so it'd be gone but not wasted, and (2) I planned to freeze the majority of the soup, and I've found previously frozen soup reheats much better if I add newly opened broth to it as it warms up on the stove.

That said, if you aim to freeze the soup for a few months but will micronuke it before eating it, consider adding all the liquid you need initially. I don't reheat much in my microwave anyway, but I find trying to add ingredients to stuff being micronuked to be a pain in the arse. If you're a more experienced microwave chef, maybe you can accomplish this feat without muss and fuss, so perhaps withholding some liquid from the initial preparation will still work for you.

And while you're making this very easy, very satisfying turkey take on tortilla soup, please experiment with it, Gentle Reader! If I ever have the misfortune of having several pounds of leftover turkey meat on hand, I'll probably whip up another batch of this soup and add some black beans and diced bell peppers (red if I can afford them, green if not). You could also substitute jalapeño or another spicier pepper for the green chiles, maybe even sauté a cinnamon stick with the onions or add a dash of ground cinnamon with the other spices for a touch of sweet.

Damn. Now I kind of wish I still had some turkey so I could go play some more!

Eh, who am I kidding?

Let's Talk Turkey

2010-01-07T07:11:00.009-06:00

Eighteen pounds and 11 ounces of it, in fact.

Yep, that's how much the freebie turkey the husband got from his company weighed. To go from a multi-year turkey boycott to having nearly 20 pounds of the stuff to prepare, I was a wee bit apprehensive about the big meal of December 25.

So as not to roll over and surrender to any sort of conventional tradition, I vowed I would not simply roast the carcass in the oven with a bit of salt and pepper, a light rubbing of butter and with an onion shoved down its throat or up its ass, which was how Mum typically prepared turkey for the turkey-eating holidays, along with some Stove Top and brown-and-serve rolls. Ugh, how...all-'merican. And you know well, Gentle Reader, all-'merican is not how we do things here at Chez Boeckman-Walker.

Instead, I turned to an old friend for some inspiration. Okay, never in a million years would this person be my friend, but she's helped me out in a pinch more than once. I'm referring, of course, to Madhur Jaffrey. In late November, I was lucky enough to find a 1973 hardcover, beat-to-hell copy of her first cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking. It's her first book and represents how she learned to cook via correspondence with her mother while she was living in London and is also her way of sharing to a much larger audience her native cuisine, although with some alterations made for the Western lifestyle (waaay back in the early 70s). The introduction itself is fascinating reading because it unintentionally speaks a lot about how globalization has changed how we eat and shop for food.

Anywho, there's not a single turkey recipe in the "Chicken, other birds, and eggs" chapter (because there are so many turkeys in India), but there is one for a roasted chicken with a spicy rice stuffing that sounded delicious enough for me to ponder the possibility of substituting a big-ass turkey for the chicken.

Roast Chicken Stuffed With Spiced Rice1 4-pound roasting chicken, thawed
2 T olive oil or vegetable oil
1 T lemon juice
1/4 t salt
1/8 t freshly ground pepper
1/2 t ground cumin
1/4 t ground garam masala
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
1" cube of fresh ginger, coarsely chopped
1 C canned whole tomatoes, drained OR 3 fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 t ground coriander
1 t ground cumin
4 T vegetable oil
1/4 t whole black mustard seeds
1/4 t whole cumin seeds
2 C (well-packed) cooked rice
1/2 t salt (or as needed)

Combine the olive oil, lemon juice, salt, ground pepper, half teaspoon of ground cumin and garam masala in a small bowl.
Wipe the chicken well with a cloth or paper towel so it is as dry as possible.
Brush three-fourths of the marinade all over the chicken, inside and out, and then let it sit, unrefrigerated, for about 2 hours. Reserve the remaining marinade.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Place the onions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, coriander and full teaspoon of cumin into a blender and blend on high speed until you have a smooth paste.
Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat and, when very hot, drop in the mustard and cumin seeds.
When the mustard seeds begin to pop (15 to 30 seconds), add the paste from the blender, keeping your face averted to avoid hot, splattering tomato-based paste.
Fry the paste on medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until browned and the oil has separated from the paste (about 10 min.), stirring more frequently as the moisture evaporates.
Add the cooked rice, as well as the salt if you need it, to the skillet, reduce the heat to low and mix the paste with the rice.
Loosely stuff the chicken with the rice, truss it, place it in an ovenproof baking dish, breast up, and then put it in the oven.
Let the chicken brown for about 20 min., basting it with the remaining marinade every 5 min.
Reduce the oven to 350 degrees, then allow the chicken to cook another hour or until you can easily move a leg when pushing it up and down in its socket, all the while basting every 10 min. with the juices that come out of the chicken.
After roasting, remove the bird to a warm platter and let sit 15 min. so the juices do not flow out when carved.

Yield: 4 servings

Nutritional Info
As with her other book, Ms. Jaffrey provides no nutritional information. Do you really think such things were obsessed over as they are now in 1973? Maybe. Maybe not.

The Faudie's Futzings
I'm sure you can gather, Gentle Reader, from the directions that this roasted bird is quite involved--and that's just with a 4-pound chicken. As much as I was looking forward to the flavor of my finished bird, I wasn't going to go to all the effort. Thanks the FSM for Reynolds self-basting turkey bags! Even ones that are more than 10 years old work.

Yes, that's right, Gentle Reader. I still had an almost-full box of Reynolds oven bags from 1997 in my pantry. We weren't even living in Chez Boeckman-Walker in 1997. That box moved twice--from our first apartment to our second and then to Chez Boeckman-Walker. Yes, I can't throw anything away.

After cleaning (and plucking from pin feathers from) my big-ass bird, I dumped it into an oven bag and did my best to glaze its cold, dead skin and hollow visceral cavity with the marinade. Let me tell you, it was quite a workout. Mind you, I regularly do bicep curls with a 50-pound bar, but a dead turkey is incredibly difficult to handle with care. That's some awkward weight to manage with one hand, let me assure you, Gentle Reader. But I coat it coated, used a twistie to close up the bag and stuck it in the refrigerator to marinate while the boys and I cleaned up from the big gift-unwrapping extravaganza and made the requisite phone calls to family, none of whom had opened their gifts yet, but it was only 9:30 or so in the morning. Since the bird would need four and a half to five hours of roasting time and supper was to be on the table no later than 6 o'clock, I wasn't exactly lamenting our early start.

Here are a few other ways I "lazified" the recipes:

I used jarred minced garlic instead of chopping up my own.

I used one canned Roma tomato from Muir Glenn--those tomatoes were big and one looked to be about the equivalent of a measuring cup.

For roasting my seeds, I used maybe a teaspoon of canola oil. I would have used less, but I knew I'd be adding more to it than just seeds.

Lest you think I'm some uneducated, illiterate fool, please know, Gentle Reader, that I did not stuff the bird with the rice. There were enough warning labels on the sucker cautioning consumers about the health hazards of putting consumables in the raw carcass that even if I didn't already know said hazards, I would have learned them over and over again by the time I'd removed the bird from its packaging. Furthermore, can you imagine how dry and disgusting that rice might have been after four and a half to five hours in a hot oven?

Anywho, since the bird didn't get stuffed with rice before roasting, that meant three things: (1) I got to shove half of a big yellow onion down its neck, (2) I could be a bit more leisurely with putting together the masala for the rice and (3) I had time to play with the turkey's carefully bagged innards and neck. "Oh goody! Guts!" I can hear you crying out for joy now, Gentle Reader. You're not alone.

While I've read a few articles on how to prepare broth from leftover bird bits, I had no intention of doing so. But why let edibles go to waste when I've got four hungry cats outside? So I simmered whatever organs were in the bag (do turkeys have multiple livers, because I swear ours came with three of 'em) along with the neck in some water, and the kids outside got a tasty treat--or so I presume. Hell, I wouldn't touch that stuff. But more on the kids later.

The turkey spent just a smidge over four and a half hours in the oven. Its little timer had popped and nothing seemed amiss with the bird when I took it out of the oven, except that somehow the Reynolds-provided zip-tie had come off the bag and melted in the bottom of the oven I'd just recently cleaned. Le sigh.... Instead of removing the bird to a platter--I don't have one large enough and had to use an oversized round, oven-safe casserole pan I got for Mother's Day in 2008 to roast the thing in because I didn't have a baking pan large enough--I just cut away enough of the bag to get at the bird and start tearing away hunks of breast meat with a fork.

That breast meat was moist, but I didn't get much of the flavor of the marinade. That probably was lost since turkey seems to have a more pronounced flavor than chicken--or at least it seems that way to my taste buds. Turkey, to me, is sort of like salmon: You can do a few things to dress it up, but you really can't escape the basic flavor of the meat. And it's probably a good thing since I still had probably 18 pounds of bird to deal with after supper, and being stuck with the same flavor would have severely limited my ability to shovel that leftover meat down the boys' throats.

The rice, unlike the turkey, was wonderfully flavorful. I'll admit I was a bit skeptical about the mouth feel of the final product; after all, you'd kind of expect, well, mush after blending a tomato-based paste with cooked rice, right? Well, perhaps you'd get mush if you used a blander rice (I saved up Basmati from prior meals) or badly overcooked it, reducing the grains to mush before you even added the paste. I also think reducing the amount of canola oil helped too.

After supper came the task of stripping the bird of as much meat as I could and then figuring out what to do with the rest. Simply tossing the bones and the juices in the trash seemed wasteful--and would stink up the garage since trash day was many days off. So after spending a good 90 minutes tearing away chunks of meat, enough to fill to large Snap Lock bowls, I was dog tired and just put the casserole pan--oven bag, juices, onion, bones, particulates and all--out on the deck storage chest on the patio, right beside the bowl with the untouched turkey organs and neck I'd set out earlier in the day that no cat had touched. For the next two days, the outdoor kids had quite a feast.

Stay tuned, Gentle Reader, to read all about my turkey leftover culinary misadventures. Getting rid of more than a dozen pounds of turkey meat ain't easy!

Actus Contritionis

2009-12-31T07:15:00.003-06:00

Deus meus, ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum, eaque detestor, quia peccando, non solum poenas a Te iuste statutas promeritus sum, sed praesertim quia offendi Te, summum bonum, ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris. Ideo firmiter propono, adiuvante gratia Tua, de cetero me non peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum. Amen.

Yes, Gentle Reader, I have sinned. I have sinned greatly. And now I must pay for it in this new year that's hours away. To paraphrase Lydia Grant's little speech from the opening credits of Fame (the TV series, not the movie or the recent movie remake), "You've got big thighs? You want to be lean? Well, lean costs. And right here is where you start paying...in sweat."

If you've been wondering why I haven't been updating the site much this month, allow me to explain. No, I haven't been so thoroughly swamped with holiday preparations and festivities that I just couldn't squeeze in a post or three or four. Instead, something inside my head...well, it broke, and the consequence of that break has been that my control over my eating has vanished. Foods I haven't touched or barely nibbled on on rare occasions have been going down my gullet with reckless abandon. The consequence of that loss of control is immense guilt, which then leads to even more eating and then even more guilt and so on and so forth.

Hence the act of contrition. Hence my inability to write about food, even though I have several recipes to share with you. If you're on of those lucky people for whom food doesn't have a lot of emotional baggage attached, I envy you, Gentle Reader. But if you're like me and you have food issues and eating issues and emotional issues and control issues, then perhaps you can understand what I've been going through.

But with the new year barreling our way and my thighs not looking the way I'd like them to look, despite increasing my running distance back to 12 miles three or four times a week to try to compensate for my out-of-control eating, I'm digging deep within me to find the true resolve I need to get my shit together and take off the weight I've put on and reestablish control. And to be perfectly honest, I'm afraid that I might not have that resolve.

I've said before that guilt is my primary motivator for a lot of what I do, and while it can be a great source of motivation, it can also bite you in the ass and trigger one of those awful downward spirals, such as the one I'm trying to pull myself out of. Sure, I should find another motivator, but when it's one that's been with me so long, it's damn hard to find another reason--a positive reason, even--to get me to turn things around.

So I'm going to try to let my culinary misadventures be my motivation. Instead of the gross quantity of empty calories I've been consuming, I'm going to try to focus on creating and consuming meaningful, flavorful, inspiring, explorative calories that I can then share with you. And it that doesn't work...well, Goodwill probably still has all my old fat clothes on its racks.

Happy New Year and New Decade, Gentle Reader! Let the guilt-inducing TV ads roll!

Happy Pancha Ganapati!

2009-12-25T06:12:00.002-06:00

ॐ गम गणपतये नमः

Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha!

May all your obstacles be removed by the elephant-headed lover of sweets, Gentle Reader, and may all your faudie misadventures be tasty.

Holidays Driving You Crazy Yet?

2009-12-15T06:03:00.004-06:00

If not, pop over to iTunes, create an account if you don't have one yet and download one of the free songs of the week--that soon-to-be Christmas classic "Must Be Santa" by none other than Bob Dylan.

Trust me, Gentle Reader, this song is guaranteed to drive you crazy. If you don't believe me, check out the video.

Sure, 'ol Bob's taken a lot of flak for this album ("He'll Sleigh You," "Horrifying, Funny" "Bob Dylan's Christmas in the Heart album is, emphatically, not only the worst Dylan album, not only one of the worst albums of the year, it's one of the worst albums of all time"), but how can you not love something that drives you bat-shit crazy within 10 seconds?

Happy holidays, Gentle Reader. Pass the valium.

I Have Great Buns

2009-12-13T19:33:00.013-06:00

The experiment with the pitas combined with the cooler weather had us contemplating a daunting task: making our own buns. Hamburger buns, specifically, to accompany the burgers the husband was making for himself and the boy from the gift of a pound of ground chuck I gave him. Yes, I know, I'm terribly generous, Gentle Reader. But I'll let the husband tell the tale.

--The Faudie

We had crunchy coconut and lime burgers again this weekend...or, at least, I had them again--the coconut-disliking boy got a plain hamburger patty while Angela abstained from the red meat altogether. And what was so special about these burgers that warrants a post? This time, they had homemade buns!

It was Angela who suggested I try making hamburger buns. With her relative success at making pita bread fresh in my memory, I decided to give it a shot. The Bread Machine Cookbook has a recipe for hamburger buns, but we decided to adapt a healthier-sounding recipe instead.

Whole Wheat Sandwich Rolls

1 1/8 C water
2 T vegetable oil
1 T honey
1 1/2 t salt
1 C whole wheat flour
2 T wheat or oat bran
1/4 C wheat germ
2 C bread flour
1 1/2 t yeast

Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
Select the Dough option on the machine, then start the cycle.
When the cycle is complete, remove the dough from the machine.
Form the dough into 12 balls, make into desired shape of rolls and then let rise for 50 to 60 min. on a lightly greased baking sheet.
Bake in an oven preheated to 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until done.

Yield: 12 rolls

Nutritional Info
Not provided, so there's no telling what too many of these buns will do you your buns.

The Husband's Futzings
The only real change I made to the recipe was the number of rolls I prepared. Because I wanted them to be large enough to hold a hamburger patty, I made nine largish rolls instead of a dozen smaller ones.

Five of the rolls I baked on a baking stone; the others on a baking sheet. The ones on the baking sheet unfortunately got a little too hot and burned on the bottom. But other than that, they came out fine.

It ain't pretty, but it's pretty good-tasting

The bun in the above picture is actually two of the burned buns after the blackened bottoms had been cut off. Whatever works, right?

I'm wondering if Angela and I might want to invest in some stone baking tiles. I could get used to having fresh-made rolls with dinner!

Happy little buns

Recipe Revisits

2009-12-13T10:19:00.006-06:00

I've somehow found myself with a good number of inexpensive, fresh zucchini and an abundance of dried cranberries, and I can't just let these thing sit around. One ingredient I put to use in a new recipe that's very, very similar to one I made before, and the other ingredient made for a tasty second try at a favorite dish.

Another Zucchini Stew
Waaay back in May, I whipped up a big pot of chicken, chickpea and zucchini stew and recall not being particularly enraptured with the flavors. With that tarnished memory in mind, I searched for some warm, tasty way to prepare the pair of zuccs I had in the 'fridge from Sprouts. Ziryab had a possible solution.

Mderbel qar'a (Algerian Zucchini Stew)2.25 lb. zucchini
2.25 lb. lamb shoulder, deboned and cut into six pieces
3 T butter
3 T peanut oil
1/2 C dried chickpeas, soaked and drained
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 t caraway seeds
1/2 t cinnamon
1 T vinegar
Salt
Pepper

Cut the zucchinis in thin slices, saute them in 2 tablespoons each of oil and butter and then drain on paper towels.
In a heavy pot, melt the remaining butter and oil
Add the meat to the pot, along with the garlic, spices and a little salt.
Saute the ingredients for 5 min., then cover them with water.
Add the chickpeas.
Cover the pot and cook its contents over low heat.
Once the meat is cooked, remove it from the pot to a serving dish.
Drop the zucchini slices into the sauce.
Add the vinegar to the pot and stir.
Top the meat in the serving dish with the zucchini and sauce.

Yield: 6 servings of unspecified size

Nutritional Info
Farouk Mardam-Bey's Ziryab: Authentic Arab Cuisine is a wonderful look at dishes from the Middle East, but it's not your run-of-the-mill cookbook. Don't turn its pages look for nutritional info.

The Faudie's Futzings
I've worked once with lamb, and I have no plans to do it again. Therefore, I substituted diced chicken breast for the lamb in this recipe.

And I only used one breast since I sort of planned to halve it--I was the only one partaking of the dish that evening--but I didn't completely halve all the ingredients. For example, I used a full amount of chickpeas called for, along with the full amounts of garlic, caraway seeds and cinnamon. I started out with about half the amount of zucchini I needed for a full batch, and I think I did halve the amount of vinegar, but I can't remember for sure at the present moment. Oh well.

Oh, and don't even think for once, Gentle Reader, that I used peanut oil and butter. I used a wee bit of olive oil for both the zucchini slices and the chicken.

Since I was working with chicken, which cooks a lot faster than lamb, this dish didn't take much time to prepare. That said, I did let the pot of goodness stew on low heat for some time to hopefully ensure the water I added (per step 4) was flavorful, not dull.

Did that stewing time yield a flavorful liquid? I'm not sure if that's what did the trick or if using the full amount of spices accomplished the task, but I can assure you, Gentle Reader, that both the liquid and the meat were resplendent with the sweetness of cinnamon and savoriness of garlic.
This stew was far more satisfying than the one I'd made months ago.

Still Keen on Quinoa
I was never fully satisfied with the quinoa pilaf with cranberries I made at the end of August. The dish was good--there's no disputing that--but it didn't fully capture the flavor of the Whole Paycheck quinoa salad I was attempting to recreate. As I had dried cranberries coming out my ears, I was eager to try again with this dish and see if a second attempt would yield better results.

Before my second attempt, I did a bit more recipe scouting online and contemplated a few recipes I didn't recall seeing before my first outing with quinoa. In my final search for recipe fodder, I discovered one from Whole Paycheck that I think might be the same quinoa salad I purchased at the flagship store. I melded it with one or two others I found, made an offering to the FSM and got to work.

Cranberry Quinoa Salad1 C quinoa
2 C water
4 T honey, divided
1 T lemongrass, minced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 1/2 t serrano peppers, seeded and very finely chopped
1 1/2 C whole cranberries
4 T fresh lime juice
1 T finely chopped fresh mint
1 T finely chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 C finely chopped red onion
Salt to taste

Rinse the quinoa several times.
Bring the water and quinoa to a boil, and simmer 20 min. or until all the liquid is absorbed.
Meanwhile, combine 2 tablespoons of honey with the lemongrass, garlic and peppers in a small bowl.
When the quinoa is cooked, stir in the honey mixture.
In a food processor or blender, chop the cranberries with the remaining 2 tablespoons of honey and lime juice, then stir this mixture into the quinoa.
Add the mint, cilantro, red onion and salt to the quinoa, tossing to combine.
Chill the salad until ready to serve it.

Yield: 4 servings
Serving size: About 9 oz.

Nutritional Info
Calories: 250
Fat: 2.5 g
Protein: 7 g
Carbs: 52 g
Fiber: 5 g
Na: 300 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Even though I strongly suspected this recipe is for the salad I'd bought and loved from Whole Paycheck, I futzed with it. I can't help myself, Gentle Reader. Futzing defines who I am.

I used approximately 2 tablespoons of honey since I was working with dried cranberries and hence didn't need 2 tablespoons for the chopped whole cranberries.
Speaking of dried cranberries, I used two handfuls of 'em. The volume conversion of whole cranberries to dried cranberries is beyond my limited mathematical means. My apologies.
Since I had no lemongrass, mint or parsley and no plans to include cilantro, I chopped half of a medium red onion and one green onion to add bulk to my salad.
I juiced one lime, which probably wasn't the full 4 tablespoons but was probably at least half of it. To add to the citrus fun, I zested a Valencia orange and tossed it in.

It's probably pretty hard to get a sense of the final recipe from my notes, so I'll just give it to you, Gentle Reader. Feel free to play with it and let me know how it comes out.

The Faudie's Tangy Cranberry Quinoa Salad1 C quinoa
2 C water
2 T honey
2 generous handfuls of dried sweetened cranberries
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 of medium red onion, chopped
1/4 C balsamic vinegar
1 green onion, thinly sliced
1 T or more orange zest

Put the quionoa (rinsing is optional, depending on your quinoa source) and the water in a large saucepan, bring it to a boil, lower the heat, cover and allow to stand until all the moisture is absorbed.
Juice the lime directly into the cooked quinoa, add the balsamic vinegar, cranberries and onions, and then stir gently to combine and coat the grains, onions and fruit.
Add the honey and orange zest, then stir gently again to combine.
Add more honey to achieve the desired level of sweetness.
Serve warm as a side dish, or chill and serve as a cold salad.

I served my quinoa warm as an accompaniment to balsamic-glazed salmon. (The quinoa-hating boys had red jasmine rice we'd bought at the local Whole Paycheck. They don't know what they're missing out on!) I apologize for not writing about the salmon recipe, but there's not too much to say about it. I was skeptical (as were some reviewers) that balsamic would be a good match with salmon, especially when paired with Dijon, but I was wrong. The glaze was quite tasty, and I saved the leftover for use with plain 'ol chicken breasts some night.

But as for my quinoa recipe, you can undoubtedly see, Gentle Reader, it's ripe for additional futzings and additions. However, I doubt I'll be doing any. The flavor of my tangy cranberry quinoa salad was just right for me, so this Goldilocks is satisfied.

Winter Picnic

2009-12-12T06:19:00.008-06:00

At our most recent dining experience at Alborz, I ate for the first time (at least to my knowledge) chicken salad. Yeah, can you believe that, Gentle Reader? For someone who grew up eating a lot of what most folks would call tuna salad--canned tuna mixed with Miracle Whip and sweet relish--chicken salad shouldn't be a foreign thing, but it was for me. And I lost my chicken salad innocence not to any run of the mill chicken salad. No, my first chicken salad was the exotic olivieh, described on its card on the buffet as a Persian chicken salad with potatoes, pickles, eggs, olives and sweet peas. I'm not a fan of olives, but this salad was damned tasty.

Was I inspired to find a recipe for it and make it myself? No. But I was amenable to trying a recipe for a turkey salad I found in the December issue of Austin Fit, the same source as the fairly successful kam kash dish I made in October. That the boy saw the recipe and thought it was something he'd like to try, I felt all the more compelled to give it a shot.

I had just one problem: I had no diced turkey and had no plans to acquire any turkey, despite the boy's ongoing hints and musings about his desire to eat a traditional holiday turkey meal. So what's a faudie to do?

Lie to her son. Big time.

Cranberry-pear Turkey Salad2 C turkey breast, diced
1/3 C dried cranberries
1/2 C bosc pears, diced
1/3 to 1/2 C cilantro, roughly chopped
4 T Dukes light mayonnaise
3 T lemon juice (1 medium lemon)
1/4 t black pepper
1/2 t lemon zest
1/2 t sea salt (fleur de sel)

In a small bowl, soak the cranberries in hot water for 10 min. and then drain.
In a large bowl, combine the diced turkey breast, drained cranberries and pears.
In a separate bowl, combine the cilantro, mayonnaise, lemon juice, pepper, lemon zest and salt and mix thoroughly.
Add the mayo concoction to the chicken mixture. [Yes, Gentle Reader, the recipe in the print and online edition of the magazine use chicken, not turkey. The writer and I were apparently on the same wavelength. -The Faudie]
Chill until serving time.

Yield: 2 1/2 C
Serving size: 2/3 C

Nutritional Info
Calories: 266
Fat: 8 g
Sat fat: 2 g
Protein: 33 g
Carbs: 15 g
Fiber: 2 g
Cholesterol: 81 mg
Sodium: 489 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Well, Gentle Reader, have you guessed the big lie I told the boy?

Don't judge me too harshly, please. Turkey and chicken are both poultry, right? It's not like I was trying to pass off tofu as turkey. And a large chicken breast I already have in my freezer is easier to dice and brown than doing the same to a turkey breast I don't have. And if the boy took no notice of the switch, so much the better!

Here are some other futzings:

I used the boy's Miracle Whip Light instead of the light mayo called for in the recipe.
My dried cranberries were sweetened, but I'm not sure if I was intended to use unsweetened. I believe you can get such things--or else the one barrel of dried cranberries at Whole Paycheck was mislabeled and not properly identified as sweetened.
I don't think I used quite a third cup of chopped cilantro because even to me that seemed like a helluvalotta cilantro. I can't even imagine using a half a cup of the stuff, especially with such a small amount of mayo.
I'm not sure that the half of the large lemon I squeezed into the mayo concoction yielded three tablespoons, but it was probably somewhat close.
I'd zested the aforementioned large lemon before halving it to juice, so I'm pretty sure I had well more than half a teaspoon of zest in the mayo combo.

And yes, I used the full amount of fleur de sel in the mayo combo. I've had that little baggie of higher-end fleur de sel in my spice cabinet for more than a year; I'd never even opened it once since its purchase at the bulk foods playland at Central Markup. I was thrilled to finally have an opportunity to use it. Did it make a flavor difference? Hell if I know!

So enamored was I with the zesty lemon flavor of the Miracle Whip-cilantro concoction that I decided to add to it by browning the diced chicken breast in a wee bit of Monini lemon-flavored olive oil. Did that result in lemon overkill? Not to my taste buds. All that lemon tartness was the right counterpoint to the sweetness that lingered in the cranberries and was hinted at in the pears.

When the husband and I sampled the finished dish, it was still fairly warm. That warmth combined with its creaminess got me thinking about that oddball creamy couscous and vegetable dish I made a while back. While I had no desire to ruin a perfectly fine batch of couscous with thick, creamy sauce again, I thought the hint of creaminess the chicken salad had would go nicely atop a bed of couscous or even quinoa--and perhaps a bed of jasmine rice for the couscous-hating boy.

Aha! Thursday night's supper was solved!

I've Got One Hand in My Pocket[bread]
But I woke up Thursday morning reconsidering that grain accompaniment. Hey, we're talking about chicken salad here. Shouldn't it be paired with a baked grain product? Don't I have four functional bread machines? Shouldn't I be able to whip up some kind of bread product that would complement the zesty-sweet flavors of the chicken salad?

With visions of Middle Eastern flavors on my mind, I whipped out my collection of bread machine cookbooks and tracked down a recipe for pitas.

Pita Bread1 1/3 C water
3 T olive oil
2 C bread flour
1 1/2 C whole wheat flour
1 1/2 T sugar
1 t salt
2 t yeast

Add the ingredients to the bread machine in the order recommended by its manufacturer.
Select the Dough cycle, then start the machine.
At the end of the cycle, divide the dough ball into 10 smaller balls.
Preheat a conventional oven to 500 degrees.
Flatten each ball into a disc, rolling each one into a circle of about 6".
Place the discs on a baking sheet and allow to rise for about 20 min.
Bake the discs for 8 to 10 min.

Yield: 10 pitas

Nutritional Info
This recipe is yet another in the long line of recipes we've used from Donna Rathmell German's The Bread Machine Cookbook. You should very well know by now, Gentle Reader, that she did not include nutritional info for each recipe. Bummer.

The Faudie's Futzings
I didn't change up the recipe, but I did inadvertently...alter the baking instructions. Let me attempt to explain, Gentle Reader.

I knew Thursday was going to be a screwy day, but I wanted somehow to present warm pitas come suppertime. That goal was impeded by my desire to kickbox with the husband, which takes about an hour and makes it kind of difficult to pop in and out of the kitchen to do things. If I got the pitas rising as we started kickboxing, I figured could still get the pitas baked and supper on the table and then get the boy to bed on time. Would it matter that I prepared the dough midmorning and then stuck it in the refrigerator until it was time to divide and rise? Well, we'd just have to hope for the best.

My quest to achieve the best result given the circumstances collided with one big wall: I had it in my head that the way to get the discs to rise was to put them in an oven that had been preheated to a certain temperature and then shut off, as Greg had done the two times he'd made pizza crusts from The New Best Recipe.

Heh.... Needless to say, the husband thought I was referring to the pizza crust's baking temperature, so he told me to heat the oven to 400 degrees. I even put the pizza stone in the oven, as I'd learned from an older episode of The Splendid Table featuring Shirley Corriher, author of BakeWise, The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking, that baking on baking stones was just the way to go. So when I put the pitas in the oven--half of them on a piece of parchment paper directly on the stone, the other half stayed on a second piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet--to rise for 20 minutes, they were in a very warm oven. Where they baked prematurely...

...and looked nothing like pitas.

While the pitas were pretty pathetic to behold, they were wonderfully tasty--although they tasted nothing like pitas I've ever eaten. Our pitas tasted more like yeasty, whole wheat dinner rolls or even the Fabulous Flats whole wheat naan we buy at HEB.

Oh well. I wouldn't be The Faudie if I didn't fuck something up in my kitchen every now and then, and the FSM knows I was overdue for a fuck-up.

By the way, I did make some couscous for me to enjoy. I added some lemon zest, freshly squeezed lemon juice, a bit of lemon-flavored olive oil and a handful of dried, sweetened cranberries to it to give it some panache. The spur-of-the-moment couscous salad wasn't as good as the fabulous orange couscous salad I often make from Kim Sunée's Trail of Crumbs, but it wasn't awful either. The chicken salad atop it worked out nicely.