The Great (and not so great) Crust Experiments

One of my favorite childhood memories is that of patting remnants of my mother’s pie-crust dough into a ball, gently rolling it the same way my mother rolled her crust, cutting the thin dough into strips with a pastry cutter, sprinkling on pinches of sugar and cinnamon and, finally, watching as my mother slid my pie-crust “cookies” into the oven, next to her beautiful pie.

Squash Soup & Horseradish Cream

Even though this is the first week of January – 17 days closer to Spring since the Winter Solstice – we’re still enjoying the last of fall’s harvest, 10 lbs of organic apples and half-a-dozen organic butternut squash still remain. When the last of the squash are eaten, I’ll tap into my dehydrated food storage from which I can continue making brown-sugar Hubbard pies, Kobocha pancakes, pumpkin gnocchi or risotta, and butternut squash muffins, the transition from whole-squash to dehydrated, transparent to my family. In the 20 years I’ve been dehydrating foods, the last half-dozen years using several Excalibur dehydrators, I just feel so thankful I’m able to preserve our food – its taste, texture and flavor, as well as “retaining its living food nutritional values – vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, and phytonutrients preseved – without hot water bath canning, which destroys heat liable nutrients, or freezing, which doesn’t eliminate bacterial growth.

A pâte à choux by any other name...

…is not a biscuit.

Recipe names and cooking terms, used in my training-wheels 1970’s Betty Crocker Cookbook, were simple, dump ‘n stir recipes, in plain English: Quick Bread, Yeast Bread, Spoon Bread, Muffins, Biscuits, Pancakes, Cakes and Cream Puffs…..

Wait. Now that I think about it, “cream puffs” – real ones, made from pâte à choux [pah-ta-shoo] dough – were not included in this type of cookbook because they did not fit the goal of being easily recreated AND successfully duplicated by 99.999999% of any living, breathing, human being no matter their food interest or cooking skill level.

Perfect Popovers

There are an amazing number of theories on how to create the best popover. Over the last few decades, I’ve tried quite a few: using ceramic dishes, glass Pyrex bowls, popover tins, adding baking soda or baking powder for extra “lift”, separating eggs, whisking egg whites to a soft peak and folding into the batter, using bread flour instead of all-purpose, and placing the filled popover pan or ramekins into a cold oven, and then, the other extreme, placing them into a 450f preheated oven.

Endive, Avocado & Red Grapefruit Salad

At first glance, this Martha Stewart recipe looks like a unique mix of flavors, but when combined, they’re not only pleasing, but result in a combination which most people I’ve served this to, find difficult to stop eating.

I made this for dinner guests, including one couple who were self-described, “unadventurous eaters”, sharing their opinions that avocado is “far too exotic” and endive too “alien in appearance”. In spite of my family’s enthusiasm when I placed the triple-recipe filled salad bowl on the dining room table, I fully expected the raised-eyebrow guests would forgo their portion. When I was ready for seconds, I found, to my great joy and sorrow, the salad bowl, which had been sitting between the vociferous couple, had been not only emptied, but telltale tracks bore witness to someone having swiped the bowl clean with a slice of bread, always the sign of great enthusiasm. Every went home carrying a copy of the recipe.

Roulade

I own a lot of cookbooks. Coming from good German and Scandinavian stock, owning a lot of anything, especially something which I think my aluminum-foil-saving, plastic-wrap-washing, rubber-band-saving maternal grandmother would have considered frivolous, weighs on me as a source of guilt. I’m just glad it isn’t pride weighing down on me, because the Comes-From-Good-Stock Code of Ethics would require me to donate every cookbook to charity.

God is With Us

Matthew 1:23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,”[a] which is translated, “God with us.”

It is because He is with us, very much alive, active and involved in every facet of the universe – His birth and life having turned the world upside-down (Acts 17:5-7) – and it continues to stir men up dividing them for Him or against Him. If it were not so, if He were a dead god, like all the other idols of this world, worshiped in ignorance (Acts 17:22-23), then Christmas, would not be filled with controversy – atheists protesting nativities, red and white candy cane colors claimed as being too religious, and Christian store employees dressing up like Jesus Christ, complete with a crown of thorns.

Storm of '08

When we first moved to New England, neighbors and friends, noticing our California license plates, regaled us with stories about why we “Californians” would “love” New England winters given the history of “the worst, most miserable winter storms”, with the hurricane of ’38 mentioned the most often.

The “ice storm of ’08”, which occurred a week ago tonight, Thursday, December 11st, will no doubt give ’38 a run for top billing, for at least a few decades to come. The moral of this story isn’t in the details of persevering, but instead, what was learned about being better prepared, when it was all said and done.

Being Prepared

As of today, the first day of winter, some people are still without power here in New England, knocked out by gusty winds and ice during the “worst ever” storm on December 11th. I’m so thankful ours was restored a couple days ago because this weekends 24-inches of snow would have added even more difficult variables – driving on slick roads to continue supplying gas for the generator and refilling water storage containers for the humans and animals. In hindsight, we were only semi-prepared. We had a generator, sufficient to power the entire house, if needed. Our food storage – dehydrated organic vegetables – doesn’t require refrigeration or a freezer. I also had a small amount of water for several days, as long as nobody used it to flush toilets. One flush took 1 1/2 gallons – a ridiculous amount.

Storm Images

I gathered together a few of the December 11th ice storm images, experimenting with Picasa’s (free from Google!) new movie-making feature. It’s low-end in its tools, and the loss of resolution, once the movie converts, is greatly noticeable, but still, it’s a fun way to make a quick movie.