Light reading

Jane Austen did needlework - just sayin'. I was thinking about this while deciding what to write about today, when all I've been doing lately is writing, and rereading Emma. 

Also, simultaneously, reading Little Dorrit! If you're only going to read one Dickens in your life, I recommend it, or otherwise Bleak House which is much greater in literary riches than one might guess from the title.

Things are very lush and green around here, as one might expect in June (how is it already June??), both indoors, in the form of the plant I've kept alive the longest, and its cutting, from when it got too big for its original pot...

and outdoors, in the form of a weed tree in our neighbour's yard that will probably knock our fence over if we let it get any more weight onto our side. 

I hate to trim this guy every year, because the birds and squirrels love running around on the branches in there, but I remind myself they also love running across the top of the fence.

Meanwhile, I'm writing a new manuscript while letting the last one cool its heels before another revision.

And not knitting, because I have only so much arm capacity still and am trying to focus my energies on typing and building some muscle, as one keeps hearing is essential for anybody over, like, twenty. 

I comfort myself with the thought that Jane Austen managed to write and do needlework too, though it wouldn't surprise me if her needleworkings were most energetic in the realm of Cool-Lookin Clothes which isn't such a pressure for me now as it was when I was, like, twenty. I must also temper the comfort with the knowledge that I am not Jane Austen.

Nonetheless, I'm confident I will get back there some day! Not to twenty, but to needleworkings and maybe even Cool-Lookin Clothes too. For now I hope you're here for my and whatever nonsense I decide is worth sharing, because if you're here for the crafty bits you may be disappointed and that would make me very sad. I do hate to disappoint!

In the absence of visually creative work I've been leaning into healthy breakfast tray art, using one of the Emma Bridgewater tray-shaped plates I picked up when we vacationed in England a few years ago. 

The trays are still sold, but in tin, if you want one too - mine are melamine, and my fave breakfast one is covered in images of chickens, slowly revealed as I work my way through greens, nuts, and fruit, in that order. Apparently dates are quite good for you and as it's Saturday, I included some today... normally I have them with tea in the mid-afternoon, paired with pecans, in lieu of cookies. I can recommend this treat as highly as I did the two Dickens titles above.  

I hope you've got a lovely weekend lined up? and that you get to do all the creative things you'd like to, over the course of the week. With luck we'll be having those things in tandem till I see you here again next Saturday. Thanks so much for spending this scrap of time with me!

 

 

 

What's cooking

I am writing this with my mouth on fire from the bowl of cress beside me - it's like eating radishes that have been sliced up into a feathery degree of Thin and Dry, and it scares me a little that this is not the most-influenced I was by reading Home Cooking last week.

Does this look like an authentic French chocolate croissant I took out of my freezer,
let rise overnight, then baked in time for breakfast?  Because it is.  YUM.

Maybe you know about Laurie Colwin already, but I was just at the wrong age when she was writing novels and cooking columns, so I only stumbled across this book recently and immediately bought it because of my longstanding dream of being a competent cook.  By competent, I mean the sort of person who can effortlessly throw together something healthy and delicious and exactly what is needed to turn that particular day into a winner.

I have such a complex relationship with cooking.  Growing up, I was surrounded by THE most amazing baked goods, contrasted by family-size meals that were very practical and involved things like liver and a scary hissing pressure cooker, and, early in the morning or late in the evening, small-scale snacklike things that were both extravagant and just-accessible like really good sausages fried in a pan, or amazingly delicious eggs.  I remember sharing tins of sardines on toast and, as a teen, getting up in the middle of the night to broil lamb chops - this did not go over well, by the way, as I had not realized the lamb chops were in the freezer for a more specific purpose - but given the choice of these three food specialties I was most attracted to to baking.  I mean: duh.

The upshot of my upbringing is that while I am good at several different supper-type dishes, the ones I want to cook are not generally ones that the people I am feeding want to eat, even if we are all agreed that liver will not under any circumstances be involved.  (although I am very very partial to liverwurst on crackers, which reminds me, it's been too long since I had that.) 

Also, I am not a person who finds cooking comforting.  After a really rough day, what I find comforting is having somebody else cook something delicious for me.   Over the years I have tried dining out, taking out, and posh deli counters to meet this need when it arises and frankly my own cooking is always better, with the exception of the really amazing pizza place up the street on Jarvis (G is For Gelato, for readers who visit this area or also live here, heh)

Just this weekend Pete picked up some ready-made scalloped potatoes for me from a gourmet shop and they were SO bad.  Wafer thin slices of potato that even after a round in the oven were still undercooked, and a sauce made with swiss cheese.  And I the only kid raised on cheddar for scalloped potatoes?  Yeesh.

I had a happier outcome from my discovery of Overnight Oatmeal.

Maybe I mentioned this innovation before but basically, you stuff equal parts instant oatmeal and milk into a covered dish or a Mason jar, if you're taking it to work, and leave it overnight.  You can add frozen fruit or sub in yogurt for the milk or do all sorts of other things but whatever you do - in the morning, when you stagger into the kitchen after not enough sleep, you have (cold) oatmeal all ready to go.  And no pot to wash up, which in my opinion makes up for the cold.

Also the chocolate croissant thing is working out for me, until we move back home to The Land of Amazing Bakeries.  My favourite of all of them offers some of their goods in an uncooked-and-frozen form and the croissants have been making my weekends special for a few weeks now.  I haven't even tried the frozen raspberry scones yet, but I should, shouldn't I. 

Most days I find myself rotating between eating raw vegetables or deconstructed sandwiches or fruit - like gorgeous Cororonation grapes when they are in season, which they aren't right now unfortunately,

I am also a fan of raw veggies and hummus.  When I really want something warm, though, I try new recipes that might or might not fill the Comfort Gap and be as pleasant to prepare and clean up after as they are to eat.

I decided I probably won't try any of the other recipes from Home Cooking - except the one for bread, because I'm already pretty competent at that and might be able to pull it off - after one fairly significant disaster.  But I loved the book and will be buying the novels next.  Laurie Colwin had a great writing voice, so warm and friendly and approachable, and she was clearly such a lovely person, as well.  She died very young in her sleep, apparently, but what a professional legacy to leave.


Ready for the disaster story?

Laurie described a potato croquette that serves to conceal vegetables in a side dish, and it sounded amazing.  Its ingredients are very basic - leftover mashed potatoes, leftover vegetables of any kind - but of course, I am rarely justified in making mashed potatoes (which I love but the rest of my family hates, except for the ones who are better cooks than I am and who usually take on the task at holidays) and there are never any leftover vegetables in my house (because why wait?) so I had to make those things first.

While my broccoli steamed,  I realized that a/ the potatoes were ready to mash  and b/ I do not possess a masher.  How is that possible??  I considered a fork which seemed like it would take forever, and then I remembered the immersion blender I bought recently to use for soup, then set aside in sadness after I used to it puree soup with barley in it (if you can't leap ahead to imagine the results of that experiment, picture twenty minutes of puree-ing and, the next day, leftover glue in a pot in the fridge.)

Any thoughts on what a single pulse from a really good immersion blender does to boiled potatoes?

So, with that result established: there I was, with my liquid potato supply dotted with finely chopped broccoli stalks and finely chopped sauteed onions, added to create some illusion of texture, when I realized that in addition to not having a potato masher I had neglected to secure bread crumbs.  I did have a very stale baguette end, but even a hammer couldn't break it apart into something I could smash into crumbs, so that was out.

Doris later pointed out that I could have used crushed crackers.  Doris is an extremely competent cook and sublime at baking too, and yet I do not hate her at all, for which I think I deserve a biscuit don't you?

Not having the sense to call Doris or think of crushed crackers myself I went with Plan C, which was to fry globs of the potato mix like it was pancake batter.  The outsides were soft and lightly browned, and the insides were warm and gooey, and I was the only one willing to eat the six I made.  The rest of the potato mix when into a glass dish for adventures the next day - I baked it with some cheese on top and treated like a gooey casserole.  Again, no takers but me.


But like I said, there's always raw food.  Laurie sang the praises of cress for instant salads so many times in Home Cooking, and I have such fond memories of the egg and cress sandwiches I ate for lunch in St. James' Park the summer I lived in England, I bought some.  I haven't had the energy yet to boil eggs but I'm sure it will happen, and hopefully on a day when I have fresh bread on hand and some cress left over from all the grazing.


What's your favourite no-fail comfort food?

Bread baking resumes

Out of all the deliciously self-indulgent options I had for filling up two perfect-weather days in the city - I picked 'overhauling the kitchen', for no good reason that I can think of.  It took the entire weekend and wasn't fun until around 3pm on Saturday when I realized I had enough counter space to use the mixer.  Pete kindly went downstairs to buy yeast for me, and I made bread.

I'm also quite desperate to finally make use of the madeleine pans Pete gave me lo these many years ago, but Priorities.  Also, I didn't have all the right ingredients.


I have a great bread recipe (which you can access here) and I used to make use of it once or twice a week, even in the house when I had very little counter space.  But eventually, the kitchen there got so cluttered with front hall stuff, I couldn't clear enough room to do anything ambitious, and when I got everything into the condo where the counters are plentiful? I was WAY too busy with the renovation decisions to do anything home made.

Now I'm remembering why it's better to bake the whole batch at once rather than refrigerating dough for a day or two.  That's the allure and temptation of this recipe: the yeast is very intense and will rise the dough even after a stint in the refrigerator.  So in theory, you can bake a loaf of bread with one third of the dough, and wrap up the other two thirds into separate buttered cling wrap parcels for fresh bread another day.  The first loaf, the one that's never refrigerated, rises really, really high:

This probably looks like an ordinary loaf that wasn't kneaded enough to get the air bubbles evenly distributed but in fact, it is the MOST DELICIOUS loaf of bread ever produced by anyone anywhere at any point in history.  I present the following evidence:

This is all that was left after the initial feeding frenzy (which did not include just me.)

Okay, okay, I will concede that another loaf of bread produced by somebody else is probably just as delicious but after a year downtown with limited good-bakery resources, this one seemed pretty fabulous.

After the refrigerator treatment, the second loaf doesn't do quite as well.  I'm happy just to see the dough clear the top of the loaf pan before it hits the oven.  The picture at the top of the post is the second loaf - attractive, but not overwhelmingly tall by any means.


And on the third day?  WHEW.  I didn't have any cling wrap for this batch so I just flung the extra dough into buttered Ziploc bags, and the air inside morning's bag was so plentiful it was like picking up a foil balloon filled to the maximum.  It was wedged into the top shelf of the fridge hard enough that I had trouble getting it out, and when I started to open the seal there was a huge POP and the Ziploc strip tore itself right off the bag on one side.  The dough itself is quite yeasty, as though it has started to ferment.  So.... sourdough?

It's hard to believe that this sluglike, cold lump could turn into anything palatable, but it did - this is the second loaf when it was fresh out of the refrigerator.  The third loaf didn't even look this good, but it's gone into the oven at very respectable height.

I think when I mix the next batch of dough I'll bake two loaves and one muffin pan's worth of buns, then freeze half a loaf and a few rolls to see how they do.  The only really yummy bread I've been able to find around here is a baguette that goes stale on the second day and it would be great to have a go-to option for fresh bread any time I want it.


Here's the important result of the weekend's efforts though.

Thanks to the miracle of reorganization and expired food removal, I'm using the kitchen again.  I'm treating food preparation as an activity and not a depressing chore.  I'm thinking things like, Hmmmm, what shall I make today?  Meringues, or Madeleines?  and answering, Why not both?

And that is a very nice feeling.  Even nicer than biting into a slice of freshly-baked bread from your own kitchen.