Fordham Miller Fare

there's more than one way to smell like a gin & tonic

i am almost out of my arbonne awaken body lotion; i ran out of the awaken sea salt scrub several months ago, but have been getting by with the lotion until now.  i love the smell of this stuff - it is combination of lemon and corriander.  which, interestingly enough, could also describe a good gin & tonic (if you went with hendrick's).  mmmmm...

thanksgiving question

i know there probably aren't many of you out there reading this anymore, but for those that remain, and that can successfully make a pie crust from scratch, answer me this:  why do i always need more (much more) than the called for amount of water to make the dough come together.

i made an apple pie this thanksgiving, but because i was not in my own kitchen, and did not haul my food processor from home, i had to resort to the truly by hand method for crust making.  usually i use the food processor, fitted with the sharp blade, to cut in the butter AND incorporate the liquid.  i never had really successful pie crusts until i tried this method.  i know that the secret to a crust that isn't tough is to handle the dough as little as possible, use very cold butter and water, and let the dough set up in the fridge for a few hours before rolling it out.  but when i add liquid to the flour/butter mixture, it always takes WAY more than is called for.  so this time, without my trusty cuisinart to rely on, i had to mix in that water by hand, a tablespoon at a time, as the recipe directed me to, and i ended up with a pie dough that was less than ideal.  but even with the cuisinart, i always have to add lots more water to get the dough to form a mass.  any ideas, ye cooks out there?

we had some surpise snow in lake placid on friday.  i kept checking the weather via the internet, and the forecast just got worse and worse and worse.  from snow...then to wintry mix...into sleet/rain...into just plain rain.  but the altitude and that artic blast must have done something, because on friday morning, we not only awoke to snow, but it snowed pretty much all day.  we spent a little bit of time walking around town with our friends jimmy and rhonda, and their two boys, who had arrived mid-day thursday.  then in the afternoon, while rhonda cooked a fabulous turkey pot pie (with, i have to say, a fantastic crust courtesy of their CSA farm store), jimmy and i took the kids to the adjacent golf course for some sledding.  it was a little dicey, as the sledding hill led pretty much straight into the road, save for a few trees that were just as menacing.  and the ground beneath the snow was the icy build up that had been coming down the two previous days.  but it was great to be sledding so early in the season, and about halfway into our adventure, the snow started coming down in earnest, and we had a view of the mountains and that quiet blanket of sound that comes when the snow falls, and it was really just ideal.

living off the land

i have just come back from our CSA (Community Shared Agriculture) farm laden with about 70 lbs of assorted organic, biodynamic, and darn cheap produce.  now, do you have any idea how much thought, time and energy goes into making this heap of vegatation into delectable (at least by my standards, you know what i'm up against here) edible concoctions?  and yet every year i get bitten by the harvest bug, with visions of long tables in the french countryside surrounded by extended family partaking of the wonderful bounty of the land.  when really, it's me alone at my kitchen table, heating up another serving of tomato cheddar onion quiche in the microwave, the 6th helping that week.

and by the way, when one purchases a log of peppered goat cheese but does not live in a home where anyone else eats even plain goat cheese, it means one must consume the entire log oneself.  not that i'm complaining or anything...

on the menu this week:  kosher cole slaw; collard greens; potato leek soup; roasted red pepper soup; eggplant in garlic sauce; lemon chicken zucchini; and homemade applesauce (known in our house as 'nana's famous').  if you happen to be in the neighborhood on friday, you might want to come by and scrape me off the floor.

attempts at routine

in an attempt to serve varied, nutritious and regular meals (and also to enjoy the process of preparing food for the family), the day before yesterday i made zucchini bread, carrot ginger soup, and tomato onion cheddar quiche.  for the kids benefit, i made little quichettes, consisting of only the egg custard mixture and cheese.  oh, and i made the crust from scratch.

when morgan came to the table, he dissolved into tears at the sight of his dinner.  keep in mind, this child currently survives on the following staples: (whole wheat) bread & butter, bananas, yogurt, and some breakfast cereals.  now, i made the quichettes knowing that both of my kids like eggs, and cheese, and bread/crust.  i tried very hard to convince morgan that the zucchini bread was really like cake (and really, it is), and that the quichette is just eggs and cheese.  i did not even TRY to serve him the soup.  he refused the eggs outright, and told me the zucchini bread, which is made with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamon, smelled like zucchini.  what the heck does zucchini smell like, anyway?  the meal ended with morgan eating a piece of bread and butter, and me barely holding back-- okay, not holding back -- my fury at his refusal to even TASTE the eggs and zucchini bread.  madeleine, i'm happy to report, love the quichette, and zucchini bread; she tasted the carrot soup and gave it a thumbs down, but she did try it and remarked that it seemed "interesting" in color and smell.

i know i shouldn't engage in power struggles over food, but i'm at a loss at what to do with this child who wants to eat bananas and yogurt 3 meals a day.  i truly don't care if he won't EAT what i make, but the fact that he won't even TRY it is what gets to me.  i know he has some serious super-taster/texture issues going on, but it's hard to get excited about cooking and serving food to your kids when one of them (and sometimes both) reject just about everything, even things they've previously eaten and enjoyed.

yesterday morning, it was madeleine's turn.  while she has become a very game eater, and expresses a lot of interest in the health value of foods, getting her dressed these last couple of days has been complete torture.  madeleine is one of those "it doesn't feel good" kids.  when she was a toddler, putting on a coat which caused her sleeves to bunch up was a regular meltdown experience.  i had to buy her shoes a size too big in order for us both to cope.  but the strange thing is, this sensitivity seems to wax and wane.  i would have thought that we were gradually outgrowing it, but this week has seen the "princess and the pea" return with a vengance.  suddenly, the clothes she's been wearing for the past 6 months don't feel good (and it's not because they're too small).  nothing feels good, and she turns into an inconsolable and rather nasty puddle of despair.  this shirt is too long, this skirt bunches up when i sit, this waistband doesn't feel good.  we managed to work through some hysteria over her sneakers, which are relatively new and which she had worn for several weeks without complaint, but the rest of it is going full steam.  good god, i can't imagine what it's going to be like when she's a teenager, and has adult size wardrobe crises.

yesterday she had her first ballet class, where they are very particular about the uniform.  we needed a blue leotard, and the one she had she had outgrown, but just barely.  still, the tears and the trauma came again.  i got her into a looser fit black outfit, but when we arrived at class and she saw the eight other girls in blue capezio leotards, she became despondent again.  the director managed to find us a blue one in roughly her size, but it was only a minute before i heard her sobs coming from behind the bathroom door.  we managed to pull it off after i cut out the tags, but i thought "if i have to endure much more of this i'm going to go mad."

today was better.  she dressed herself in a skirt and shirt without a tear, and only got my ire up when she went into a screaming rage at her little brother over the "theft" of the swing she had been using.  tonight at dinner, i served whole wheat spaghetti, Ian's fish sticks, and peas.  neither child cried.  i did not raise my voice.  maddy started off with an "i lost my appetite" speech after one look at her plate, but bucked up and ate both fishsticks plus her pasta plus a copious amount of peas.  morgan whimpered at the fish sticks, proceeded to peel the breading off of them and eat what remained, ate about 3 strands of spaghetti, and ignored his 5 peas.

on an unrelated note, just before dinner maddy was doing a ginsberg-esque chant with the aid of a tamborine, while morgan provided the interpretive dance segment.

you must make these...and then eat them

when i lived in madison, i used to go to a place called the original pancake house.  please don't confuse this with IHOP -- this place had great food, and a gazillion different styles of pancakes.  my favorite by far was the 49ers, though i could never convince the retaurant that they should serve real maple syrup, and not that table ****.  real cheese they understand in wisconsin, but not real syrup.

the best way i can describe 49ers is deliciously gooey (but i don't mean uncooked gooey).  somewhere between a buttermilk pancake and swedish pancake, mmmmm.

i tried going to an OPH in bethesda, md, on a trip to visit family.  but the 49ers just weren't the same.  the OPH didn't originate in madison, but nonetheless the restaurant there seemed to have more of a commitment to the quality of the food than this particular franchise.  after moving back east, i thought my 49er days were over.

then came the internet.  i googled for 49er pancakes a while back, and came up with a bunch of hits which used sourdough starter as the base.  makes sense enough: 49er, california, sourdough.  i was intrigued, but i don't keep sourdough starter around generally, so i didn't get around to making them.

saturday, as i was looking up a bisuit recipe for strawberry shortcake, i came across a recipe for sourdough pancakes.  the recipe didn't call for sourdough starter; instead, it had you start the batter the night before, to give the dough time to rise and ferment.  so i figured i'd give it a go.

they were all i remembered and more.  the batter puffs up beautifully, and once the griddle really gets going, they make wonderfully browned, thin, chewy, slightly gooey cakes.  serve only with pure maple syrup, please...

sourdough pancakes

ingredients

2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/2 cup warm water (105-115 degrees)

1 1/2 cups warm milk (105-115 degrees)

3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

2 cups all purpose flour

3 tbsp sugar

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp salt

wisk together yeast and water.  let stand until the yeast is dissolved, about 5 minutes.

whisk in milk and melted butter.

in large bowl, whisk together flour and sugar.  pour wet ingredients over dry, and gently whisk them together, mixing just until combined.  cover bowl tightly and set in warm place for 1 hour.  let the mixture increase in volume by at least half and become bubbly.  uncover and stir the batter down, then cover the bowl again.  let rise overnight at room temperature or in the refrigerator.  (the batter can be refrigerated for up to 48 hours, but it will become tangier)  if the batter is refrigerated, let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes before proceeding.

stir to deflate batter and whisk in eggs and salt.  preheat griddle.

spoon 1/4 cup batter onto griddle for each pancake, leaving room for spreading.  this is a thin runny batter that forms irregular shaped rounds before it sets, but the pancakes will look fine when you flip them over.  cook until the top of each pancake is speckled with bubbles and some bubbles have popped, then turn and cook until the underside is lightly browned.   serve immediately or keep warm in 200 degree oven while you finish cooking the rest.  serve with butter and maple syrup.

i'm high on yeast

me and my bread machine have come to an understanding.  you see, i learned how to bake bread when i lived in a 22-person housing coop.  and i made all that bread by hand.  10-15 loaves at a time.  not even a mixer.  just a big ball of dough and me.

i bought a bread machine when the price plunged to about $30.  but i didn't like the shape and size of the loaf, and also how the mixing blade got baked into the bread, which ruined the last two or three pieces.  but like a lot of things, i couldn't see clear to donate/throw/give it away.

today i pulled it out, and used the "dough" function, which mixes everything and gives the dough its first rise.  this saves me a bunch of time, both in work and cleaning, but allows me the pleasure of deflating and shaping the dough.  making bread without touching the dough just seems wrong to me somehow.

i learned a trick recently that if you rub the top of a loaf of bread, even whole wheat, with butter just as it comes out of the over, the crust will be nice and soft -- a good quality if you have kids with crust issues.  the loaf i made was from the recipe on the king arthur whole wheat flour bag, and i had to substitute yogurt for dried milk powder, but it came out just lovely:  brown and soft and sweet (thanks to a 1/4 cup of molasses).

i had visions of baking all our family's bread from this point forward.  the kids gathered around the warm loaf and begged for a piece.  but when i buttered up a slice for morgan, he complained that it smelled "burned," and spit his first bite out.  and so, my bubble was burst.

still, i enjoyed fantasizing about expanding bread keepers with slicing guides, and silicone pastry brushes, and something called a pan de mie pan.  must be the yeast.

not-so-candid camera

morgan and i share some pizza (pics and commentary courtesy of kristen at masslive.com)

http://www.masslive.com/campuscam/photos/gallery.ssf?cgi-bin/view_gallery.cgi/mass/view_gallery.ata?g_id=3821

it tastes like....burning

i ran around the kitchen like mad this morning, behind schedule again three days post "spring forward." i was trying to cook the kids french toast, which was the listed item on our new "breakfast schedule" (trying to get some structure in our lives).  morgan, who is know for his pickiness, spit his first bite out, and i bit my lip trying to keep from admonishing him.  "it's like there's fire on my tongue," he said.  since he can be known for hyperbole, especially around food, i had a taste myself.  "it's perfectly fine," i told him.  and then....wait....yes, frank's hot sauce.  i cooked the french toast in the cast iron pan that bill had used to make wings the other night.  so, french toast with a side of bleu cheese dressing anyone?

because she asked

i think a big mamou is the feeling you get after eating a big meal at chef wayne's.

and i think a small mamou is the feeling you get if you only have appetizers.

notes from the weekend

• morgan has coined "smell out" as a way of describing a food-related intrusion into his (highly sensitive) olfactory world.  to his cousin jeff, who was eating a fritatta in morgan's presence, he declared, "jeff, you're smelling me out."
• maddy has started two-wheeler training camp.  bill took her to the town common saturday to practice her two wheeling.  because maddy has a tendency to vent her SUBSTANTIAL frustrations on her kindly parents with impunity, bill adopted the alter ego of "mr. ross, bicycle coach," to avoid being at the receiving end of her more virulent invectives.  while this was somewhat successful, bill believes that a disguise may be necessary to complete the ruse.
• both kids are home from school today.  maddy, viral fever illness.  morgan, potential for stomach flu.  me, i've got a stiff neck from "wrong sleeping" (exacerbated by two more consecutive nights of agonizingly "wrong sleeping"), and am awaiting return calls from the triage nurse ("just how many ibuprofens is TOO many?") and the massage therapist.  in the meantime i'm clining to my kaz Themipaq Heat Therapy System like the life raft in a stormy sea that it is.  (see picture, right.  no, that's not me, but mmmmm, i could use a little of that soft focus in my life right now...)
• btw, when you get your medical care from the local university health service, you can expect a lot of "those" kinds of questions when your 7-year-old starts reading everything in sight.  we are getting a HUGE head start on alcohol, drug, and sex education.
• oh, and two last words:  chef wayne's.