Time Flies?

Listen, I know I've been neglecting my blog, but I had no idea that four months had passed since my last post. When a blogger doesn't post for four months, do people think "wow, she must be busy", or "I wonder if she disappeared off the face of the earth", or do they just think "loser". I'm afraid I know the answer to that!

So, to get back on track, here's a brief flashback of the last four months. I made some more bread, some of which I donated to my in-laws as a house warming gift. That was a bit nerve-wracking, because my father-in-law is only the world's most prolific and talented bread maker ever, at least until he retired from bread-making. And, although the oatmeal bread was a bit flat (baker's error), both that and the honey-wheat tasted great. Phew. As a bonus, since they were moving into a much smaller place, they graciously gave me all their bread making ingredients (literally pounds and pounds of flours, mixes, grains, etc.), but also a bread machine! I was leery of the bread machine, but finally broke it out just the other day. My conclusion: fast, EASY, and quite good. It was a double-cheat, because not only did I use the bread machine, I used a packaged mix too. I don't care - I was just in it for the bread!

My wonderful husband and I went on vacation in April to Shenandoah National Park, where we did lots of hiking, and lots of eating. Some of the food was quite good (barbeque), and some of it was simply amazing. That would be the Tapas restauarant "Mas" in Charlottesville. We were blown away. It's a good thing, because we waited over an hour for a table. Apparently, there was some Slow Food oyster tasting event going on, and people were really taking their time (maybe becasue it was slow food!). The restaurant did ply us with plenty of free oysters, so that made the wait bearable. It was a west coast oyster vs. east coast oyster battle, and honestly, I thought the west coast oysters were better. I would have eaten a dozen of either variety, but I just preferred the ones from the west coast. If you're ever in Charlottesville, don't miss this place. Everything we ate was delicious. The bacon-wrapped dates were to-die-for. The shrimp was fantastic. The duck was sublime. I think you get the idea! We also ate at a Thai restaurant in Harrisonburg that was very good. The waitress made fun of us because we didn't leave a scrap of food on the plates. Almost everyone else had leftovers. Hey - we had been working hard all week, hiking all over Shenandoah - we were hungry!

On the homefront, we haven't been cooking much. Any excuse will do. Lots of veggie burgers, hot dogs, Chinese food (delivered), and the occasional homemade pizza. We did join a new Community Supported Garden, and got our first load of veggies last week, so maybe that will compel us to be a little more creative. We did manage to pull off a home cooked meal for Mother's Day, sort of a Mexican fiesta - flank steak, quesadillas, pulled pork, rice, and a corn and black bean salad. And a big thanks to my Mom for bringing those fabulous shrimp, and dessert. My mom makes it look so easy!

Last week, I was in Las Vegas for a business conference, and am a little disappointed to report that the food was nothing to crow about. One night, we went to "The Buffet" at The Bellagio, and they had all my favorites - King crab legs, Snow crab legs, sushi, shrimp, etc., but the quality was only so-so. I guess it's all about the quantity (and I was okay with that!). I wanted to try Bobby Flay's restaurant, but didn't get there. We did attend a reception one night that was catered by a Mexican restaurant in Henderson, and that was fantastic. Some of the best guacamole I've ever had!

I think that about catches me up - I'll try to be better about posting, but no promises. Life has a way of taking over, it seems.

More bread, cheese... no whine!

Since Wednesday was an awful, icy, messy day, I decided to take the day off of work and be a domestic goddess. And goddess I was - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

First up was a new batch of bread to bolster my confidence. Even as a newbie, I've had amazing luck with the bread, and today was no exeption. I tried an oatmeal bread from the Quaker Oats web site: http://tinyurl.com/b2omkl. First, you make a wet mixture.


Then, you mix in enough flour to make a stiff dough.



Rise, punch down, rest, form into loaves, rise, and finally, bake those bad boys. They came out looking pretty fine.



And they taste pretty good, too. Phew! Then I was on to the cheese. If you read through my previous post, you can see I had three theories on why the cheese experiment failed the first time. Now I have a fourth. At the end, after you've heated and curdled and mixed, you separate the curds from the whey and put it in the microwave. The directions say to nuke it for about a minute, but if you read further, it says "the cheese must be 135 degrees to stretch". Aha! Turns out, we are so slow taking the curds out of the whey, the cheese cools down significantly. Heating for 1 minute doesn't get the cheese to the proper temperature. Using a thermometer this time, I nuked it until it was hot. And lo and behold, I had cheese! I didn't take any pictures, because I was kind of anxious and excited, but take my word for it. I made two 8 oz balls of creamy white mozzarella cheese, which taste quite heavenly. I think that some homemade pesto (from the freezer), homemade French bread (again, freezer), and a nice lookin' tomato (I know, it's not local) will make a beautiful little meal. I can't wait! (maybe this time I'll remember to take a picture).

To make up for it, here's a picture of my buddy "Patches" enjoying a snack I put out for him.



Enjoy!

Bread, Cheese... and whine?

Exciting news here in the house of the newlyweds! We took our Bed, Bath & Beyond gift certificates (wedding gifts), and our 20% off coupon, and we bought the Kitchen Aid Professional 6oo Stand Mixer! Whoohoo! 575 watts of mixing power! The six quart mixing bowl holds enough for 13 dozen cookies, 8 pounds of mashed potatoes, or 8 loaves of bread! Because, after all, it's all about the bread. After one success making honey-wheat bread (by hand), I decided that a mixer would really facilitate the mixing and kneading process. As a bonus, the mixer came with a recipe book with various types of bread (amongst other things).

So, while hubby was brewing up a batch of beef stew in the crock pot (also a wedding gift), I mixed up the ingredients for French Bread. It was pretty exciting, if I do say so myself. As instructed, I added all the ingredients in the pre-warmed mixing bowl, except the last 2 cups of flour. I then added the flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough came together. What a thing of beauty is a big hunk of bread dough spinning merrily on a dough hook! (it sounds like I've been drinking). Placed into a greased bowl and allowed to languish in a warm oven for an hour, it rose up beautifully, was punched down, split in two, and rolled into lovely loaves. These loaves were then placed on a greased pan, covered with a damp towel, and allowed to rise again for another hour. There was a slight glitch during this process, where I checked on the loaves, and noticed that the towel was sticking. I gently removed the towel, and replaced it with wax paper. BAD IDEA!!! As I found out a little while later, rising dough sticks to wax paper like nobody's business. By the time I got that paper off, my loaves were looking mighty defeated. But, undaunted, I baked them anyway - good thing. They came out looking beautiful (maybe a little misshapen), chewy, and delicious. Just imagine if I hadn't used the wax paper... next time.

Then on to our next (mis)adventure. Cheese making! This has been in the works for a while, particularly since Christmas, when the hubby bought me the beginner cheese making kit from http://www.cheesemaking.com/. I had purchased a gallon of organic milk from the food co-op where we get our veggies, and the kit included the citric acid, rennet, and the instructions that we would need to make a pound of mozzarella. Only, it didn't quite happen. I'm not going to do the blow-by-blow here, but suffice to say that while we did achieve separation of curds and whey, it was fleeting at best. What we ended up with was a mooshy mess that was not too appetizing, definitely not mozzarella, and in the garbage. It was sad. And gross.

I'm not totally deterred yet, and I will try to figure out what went wrong. It was one of 3 things: 1) the milk was actually ultra-pasteurized, which does not make good cheese. This is probably unlikely, as it was not labeled as ultra-pasteurized, 2) We didn't add enough rennet to set the curd up properly - we'll add more next time, or 3) we stirred too vigorously, inadvertently breaking up the curd. This is definitely more art than science, folks. The only really sucky thing is that a gallon of milk is not cheap. I feel like asking for my money back! I guess that where the "whine" comes in. We were bummed, but at least we had a nice dinner of homemade beef stew, and fresh crusty bread. Plus those brownies we have stashed in the freezer...

Slacker!

That's me, I'm a slacker. I can't believe it's been a month since my last post. A very busy month, mind you, but that's no excuse.

Anyway, our latest obsession around here is pizza. Homemade pizza, that is. Last spring, while on vacation with my 19 of my husband's extended family members, his sister made pizza. Obviously, it was delicious (or else why would I be writing about it?), but the fun part was the "customization". Each and every person got to decide what they wanted on their quandrant (just a side note, this is easier if you're using a rectangular or square pan). Sauce, cheese, toppings, it was all chosen, applied, and popped into the oven. Fifteen minutes later, voila! Your very own pizza. Luckily, after only 3 months of requests (hey, we're all busy people), we recieved the recipe by e-mail. It's shockingly quick and simple. Ready?

Pizza Dough: (this makes 2 pizzas - we usually cut this in half)

Mix in large bowl:
3 cups flour (we usually mix wheat and all-purpose flour)
1 Tbs salt
1 pkg dry yeast (approx 4 tsp)
2 1/2 cups warm water (note: I mix the yeast into the warm water to dissolve it)
Add 4 cups flour (again, any combination of flour)
Mix and knead until smooth
(If you have time, you can let this sit for 15-30 min. If you don't have time, go to next step)
Divide in two (if you didn't halve the recipe)
Roll out into shape of pan
Cover with toppings (for planning purposes, we use 8 oz. shredded cheese for each pizza, and about 8 oz of sauce, just eyeball it)
Bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 min

I probably don't need to give you suggestions for toppings, but I will anyway. We've made all-veggie; sausage and onion; sausage, mushroom, onion; pepperoni; and at our peak of creativity, we made a buffalo chicken pizza. That one had buffalo sauce instead of marinara sauce, about 2 oz of blue cheese (in addition to mozzarella), buffalo chicken strips (found in your grocer's freezer), and onions (okay, we ALWAYS put onions on our pizza - sometimes raw and sometimes cooked).

The pizzas seem to get better and better, as we get a feel for how the dough should look, how much of each topping to use, what spices to add, etc. My mom got us a pizza stone for Christmas, but unfortunately, that didn't seem to work too well. We had made the pizza on a peel (that's what those big flat shovel-looking things are called that they use in pizza places), and pre-heated the stone in the oven. But when it came time to put the pizza on the stone, it stuck to the peel. Fifteen minutes later, we finally got it off, making a huge mess in the process, and wrecking the beauty of the veggie pizza. Then, after it was done baking, it stuck to the pizza stone. I'm sure all of this comes down to operator error, but when we have a non-stick pizza pan that makes a beautiful crispy crust... let's just say we'll "stick" to that!

Hopefully, you'll enjoy the pizza as much as we do. It's easy to keep the ingredients on hand, and is actually fun to make (kneading dough is good for stress release!). I think I may try a white pie one of these days...

What a Week!

We did indeed have a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's. Besides turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, there were: peas, carrots, turnips, brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and sauteed mushrooms. For dessert, there was pumpkin pie, apple pie (made by my sweet husband), and some wonderful pumpkin cheesecake muffins. Delicious! After dinner, we watched the wedding video taken by my 12 year old niece. She did a fantastic job! I told her she could have a pretty good side job, if not a very successful career. :-)

The rest of the weekend was pretty quiet. We were supposed to go away for the weekend, but the extreme cold weather had closed the Falls Trail at Rickett's Glen State Park, so we decided to postpone the trip for better weather. We did go for a hike on Saturday, a long 6 mile circuit hike in the Rockaway River Wildlife Management Area. Not an easy hike! We were wiped out. We were still working our way through the Thanksgiving leftovers through the weekend, but by Monday we were ready for something different. We decided to try Murphy's Hideaway in Rockaway - not an easy place to find, but I have to say it was worth it. Monday happens to be Lobster Insanity - a 1 1/4 pound lobster, 6 clams, potato and salad for $15.95. I thought about it, but we had actually come looking for a good burger. They have 8 oz Angus Burgers, with your choice of "accessories". I went with bacon and swiss, the hubby chose cheddar and onions. Yum. They were excellent! And the restaurant was a great find, lots of intriguing specials and happy hour treats. Something called Oogy wawa is on the blackboard...

The rest of the week was lost in a blur of hard work and late hours. Both of us are in a very intense time at work these days, so we basically just come home, eat something, and collapse on the couch. One day (Thursday?), we made a pasta dinner that turned out really well. I found the recipe on Cooking Light, although I wouldn't necessarily consider it to be "light". I subsistuted chicken thighs for the chicken tenders, and used half and half instead of cream, but otherwise followed the recipe. You can find it here: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=698596

Friday we decided to live a little, so after working until 6:30 (that's just wrong), we went to Thai Ping in Boonton. It is a beautiful little restaurant, nicely decorated, and they were even playing Christmas music. Everyone working there was very friendly and helpful. We started with the Thai Ping Egg Rolls, 4 small egg rolls served with a zippy dipping sauce. For an entree, I had Yum Nuur (Thin sliced tender charcoal beef marinated with fresh chili herbs, red onions, tomato, cucumber, mint leaves, and lime juice served on a bed of lettuce), which was delicious. I ordered it mildly spicy, but it wasn't really spicy at all. My husband got Mussaman (with pork), which is described as "Sauteed potato, onions, peanuts in a tangy piquant curry coconut milk curry". He ordered it medium spicy, and it was... HOT! Like, burn your tongue, breathe fire, sweat from your eyes hot. But tasty! I found that if you didn't get too much of that "piquant" sauce, it was much less painful. But we brought half of it home. Maybe with lots of rice or noodles, it will be a bit milder! I think the lesson here is to just order the food mild. We had a similar experience at Thai Nam Phet in Rockaway, so now we know. Thai food is pretty darn hot. We also rewarded ourselves with dessert. I had one of my favorites, Mango with Sticky Rice, and the hubby had fried bananas with ginger ice cream. I managed to get a taste of the ice cream before it was hoovered off the plate, and it was very tasty. All told, the bill was about $60 (no drinks, it's BYO), and a very pleasant evening after a totally crazy week.

A Commitment to Kindness

Happy Thanksgiving! I have so much to be thankful for, starting with my wonderful husband of only 47 days. He is truly the very beat of my heart. But wait, there's more! Good health, a beautiful home, and a secure job. My fantastic family and friends. Sunrises, crisp fall days, apple pie, fleece, the library, my car, woodland creatures, and my silly Christmas (well, Thanksgiving) cacti. And the list goes on and on. So lets just say I'm very happy. This year more than ever, I feel the need to give to those who aren't as fortunate as I have been. So, I have decided that every day between now and Christmas, I will try to do something kind for someone else. I haven't really defined what "something kind" is, but so far I have bought cookies from a young woman at a bake sale, volunteered to be a part of The Army of Women (http://www.armyofwomen.org/), and donated money to two local food pantries and a toy drive. I'll keep you posted!

On to more mundane things - dinner last night. Actually, it started yesterday morning by loading up the slow cooker with two small onions (cut into chunks), three boneless chicken breasts, two cans of Ro-tel tomatoes, and one package of taco seasoning. I turned it to low and set the timer for eight hours. When I got home from work, I shredded the chicken using two forks, and added a can of drained black beans and a cup of corn. This recipe was sort of ad-libbed from http://littlehomeontherange.blogspot.com/, in a blog posted back in May. It was ad-libbed mostly because I couldn't remember where I had "filed" the recipe! Anyway, we served the chicken mixture on whole wheat tortillas with shredded cheddar cheese, salsa and brown rice. I'm not going to lie to you - it was MESSY! But it tasted great. Next time, I might add some hot Ancho or Chipotle Chile powder to make it spicier.

Today we travel to my parent's house in Pennsylvania for a true Thanksgiving feast. My mom informs me she has "cut back" on the number of vegetables she is making this year. I'm not sure what that means, as one year we counted nine different vegetables, not counting the mashed potatoes. But she is a fabulous cook, so I'm sure whatever she makes will be delicious. My husband made an apple pie, which I know will be yummy because we had a "test pie" earlier this week. The two of us ate the whole thing in 3 days. The proverbial icing on the cake will be a bottle of wine that we bought in Sonoma Valley on our honeymoon. It's going to be a great day!

Flirting with Obsession

You know how it goes. You have a passing interest in a subject, pick up a book on the topic, and suddenly you're obsessed. My latest idea? Making my own cheese! But let me back up...

For a few months now, I have been hearing about the Slow Food movement, eating locally, and being a "more responsible" carnivore. We actually joined an Organic Food Co-op back in the spring, and now every other week we get a big sack (canvas, of course) of fruits and veggies, all of them organic, most of them local. I'm not big into the politics of organic food, but as you know by now, I am big into the taste of food. And I can tell you, these fruits and vegetables sure do taste good. I don't know if it's because they're organic, or because they are local (and therefore, fresher, and not bred to be transported 2,000 miles), and I don't really care. And we try to buy other produce from the local farmstand - lots of corn, tomatoes and peaches over the summer, and apples in the fall. And then I went to the library and got the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver.

In a nutshell, the book documents a year in life of Barbara Kingsolver and her family as they move from Arizona to Virginia and try to grow all their own food, or buy locally whatever they can't grow themselves. And I am totally sucked in. Here I am, in November, trying to figure out where to put the vegetable garden (we have a very hilly, shady, rocky yard). Wondering where we can buy locally raised beef, pork and chicken. Contemplating my own little flock of chickens (okay, that's a lie. I hate chickens). But seriously, I really want to try making my own cheese. It seems so EASY. Just one gallon of milk and a few cheese making implements, and 30 minutes later you have a pound of fresh made mozzarella! In the summertime, add fresh tomatoes (heirloom varieties are best) and basil from my (imaginary) herb garden, and voila! You have a caprese salad.

All I can say is, stay tuned. I haven't finished the book yet, but I can only imagine what will tickle my fancy next. Our own fresh goat's milk? Hand loomed alpaca sweaters? I guess at a minimum, I could double the size of my container garden (one tomato plant, that after a rough start - thanks to the deer - did finally bear 3 lovely Brandywine tomatoes). That doesn't seem like too much of a stretch!