On the Other Hand, Who Knows What I'll Do?

(After) Dinner Tonight: P Party cake

2009-11-13T23:04:00.004-05:00

We have our challenges, we parents. We parents of shockingly willful preschoolers. (At least, I am shocked. Oddly, no one else seems particularly shocked. Hmm.) Anyway, when he almost-willingly used a public restroom this afternoon, I declared that we would have a party. With cake.

This recipe is a cake I grew up with – it was a staple at class parties and church suppers, usually with no icing. The recipe is in plenty of places; I noticed it’s even in the most recent issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food, where it mentions it’s in a new cookbook called “Mad Hungry.” It’s called Busy Day Cake there, which is a good name, and cooks.com calls it vinegar cake - but to me, it was always Crazy Cake. (Until today.)

This recipe has a ton of advantages. You mix, bake and serve it in one dish, so all you have to wash today is a measuring cup and 2 spoons. It’s vegan, it’s natural, it’s very cheap. But the reason I made it today – we were out of eggs. I felt that taking the little darling to the supermarket would be, um, pushing my luck. It’s definitely a ‘pantry staples’ dish.

Crazy Cake can turn out heavy, but the one I made today was quite light and flavorful and had nice textures - chewy outside, tender inside and a little touch of gooey at the center.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a pyrex cassarole or an 8-inch square baking pan, whisk together:

1.5 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and half teaspoon salt. You can also throw in a little cayenne pepper, chili powder or nutmeg…I thought I was being all clever and sophisticated, but I couldn’t taste them.

Make a well in center of dry mix and pour in 6 tablespoons vegetable oil, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 tablespoon white vinegar, and 1 cup cold water. Stir till smooth. This is when I threw in a couple handfuls of semi-sweet chocolate chips. These are a great addition, but some sunk – if I had thought of it earlier and put them in with the dry ingredients, it would have been better. Bake until a chopstick inserted in center comes out clean. In a square pan, this will be about 40 minutes. – with the cassarole dish, which was deeper and smaller, it took about an hour. You're supposed to let it cook completely, but it's really good while it's still a tiny bit warm.

Bonus tip: Best Icing Ever, I am completely serious:

I improvised some buttercream the way I always do – cream soft butter (regular, not unsalted), add a drip of vanilla, and confectioners sugar by the spoonful, scrape down the sides of the bowl, keep tasting…but today, I threw in a chunk of cream cheese. Whip until fluffy. This is more definitely the best icing I have ever made, and it may be the best icing I have ever eaten.

Watch this (don't let the thumbnail scare you)

2009-11-13T21:36:00.003-05:00

This was on Lifetime last night, during Project Runway (which I am kind of...over, sad to say. It's been a beautiful relationship, but we've grown apart.) The black and white and the intercutting is just so ravishing. I don't know if I'll like the film (I admired Rob Marshall's work on Chicago, but I'm concerned that he's returning to those same ideas...exactly those same ideas.) but certainly do like this.

this made me smile.

2009-11-12T23:17:00.002-05:00

Got a little time in a bookstore yesterday, where I wrote completely non-memorable things in my journal and also look at some very fine knitting books.

That is from this one:

but this one is also good:

Anyway, a little cairn cozy for you on this gross rainy day.

here comes the feeling you thought you'd forgotten

2009-11-04T21:54:00.001-05:00

I made pie!

2009-11-03T23:38:00.003-05:00

I made pie crust, more noteably, which I had never done before. I found a butter pastry recipe in my beloved and completely unbound Easy Basics for Good Cooking.

Put 1 cup of flour in your food processor.
Add 6 tablespoons of cold butter and a small amount of salt.
Pulse the food processor a few times. In much less than a minute, you'll have a bowl of even, uniform tiny lumps of buttered flour.
Break 1 egg into the food processor, and pulse a couple more times until it comes together into one smooth lump.

Wrap the lump in plastic wrap and stash it in the fridge for a while. (The recipe calls for one hour, but I had it in a lot less than that.)

I filled this with 3 chunked apples and 2 handfuls of frozen cranberries, tossed with sugar, cinnamon, allspice, a splash of apple cider, and a spoonful of cornstarch. Ian helped me gently place the top crust on, and was very happy to poke holes in it. Baked at 425 until the top was brown and crispy, the filling was bubbly, and you can pierce the apple with a table fork. Like 40 minutes or so. (I had to cover the top with a piece of foil for the last part of the baking.)

I thought I had rolled this crust out way too thin, but it came out great! It took a lot for me to not STAND THERE AND EAT THE ENTIRE PIE.

I also made a great apple dessert last night, which I'll tell you about some other time.

2009-10-31T23:23:00.000-04:00

moderately ashamed of myself

2009-10-30T01:27:00.000-04:00

i will be laughing about this for the next 3 days.

um

2009-10-30T00:22:00.001-04:00

via Jesus Needs New PR.

what I will bring to the bonfire:

2009-10-25T22:11:00.003-04:00

These which I saw on the always-delightful SnackReligious.
EDITED TO ADD: These were a huge hit at the Guy Fawlkes festivities, and also with the babysitter. I'm thinking the second pan will get a similar reception at the potluck Sunday. Recommended.

And, no, we haven't made pretzels yet, and it doesn't look like it's going to rain tomorrow, which means that there will probably be a limited amount of kitchen time.

I have a video to put together, but my laptop does not have a big enough brain to handle it. (This would be a REALLY bad week for the servers at work to crash, incidentally. They've been kind of dodgy lately, randomly refusing to print docs and other occasional hiccups that we've been working around. Anyway, not this week, please, is all I'm saying.)

Knitting news: I am almost done with the famous entrelac stroller blanket. I had plans to work on it at various times this weekend - car trip, kid's nap, now...but I've made a lot of progress and feel like the end is in sight. If I can just remember how to do the bind-off triangles...

playdate news: If the week shapes up the way the national weather service seems to think it will, we may have one more backyard party on Friday, before daylight savings time ends.

2009-10-15T00:18:00.000-04:00

they look depressed. But I'm excited. More at Pedestrian.

Dig this:

2009-10-09T23:55:00.002-04:00

Another Day, Another Monster is an excellent blog by a woman whose name I totally cannot find because the computer is cloggy and I am lazy. The woman makes snarky comments to accompany her photos of her pretty excellent little amiguri monsters, of which she creates a new one every day. I found this through the Lion Brand blog

[as most of you know, Lion is a brand of yarn, available at a discount at all your better Ben Franklins and Hobby Lobbys. I am a completely unconvincing as a yarn snob, so I'll admit that I have knit several of my fav projects with Lion Brand yarns, such as the much-aligned Homespun.

I just Googled "Homespun is the Devil" to see if I could find some examples of such maligning to share with you, but SHOCKINGLY "Homespun is the Devil" is a Googlenope.

BUT NOW IT WON'T BE! Now I'll be a unique hit on Google, should anyone ever try to Google that phrase again.)

(Anyway, I digress. Many people hate Lion Brand yarns; while they aren't my favorite, I find many of them quite serviceable, especially at markdown prices.]

MY POINT IS that this blogger apparently works at the Lion flagship store in NYC, and I was pleased to see Lion promoting a blog that is written in a normal venacular, including the occasional mild curse word. Go Lion Brand! Go boldly through these squeamish times. Yay.

New Recipe - That's Better.

2009-10-01T23:06:00.003-04:00

So I made this chicken paprikash for dinner on Monday night. And it was fine. It had some decent flavors, and it kind of 'grew on us' as we ate it.

But tonight I looked into the fridge and said "I can do better."

Better Quick Chicken Paprikash:

Heat the oven to 450, and at the same time warm some olive oil in a cast iron skillet on the stove top. Take 5 boneless chicken thighs - salt and pepper them and brown them - about 4 minute on one side, 3 on the other.

During those 7 minutes, wash a pint of grape tomatoes, and squish them (I guess you could cut them in half, but I just used my fingers.) into a baking pan with olive oil.

When the chicken is a little brown on both sides, remove the pan from the heat, and remove the chicken from the pan. Put the chicken pieces on top of the tomatoes in the baking pan and pop that all in the oven.

Slice half a large sweet onion and several cloves of garlic. Throw those into the stovetop pan - it will still be pretty hot and oily. Return that to heat and cook until the onions are soft and brown. Drop in some slices of red pepper and some sliced mushrooms and cook some more. (You may need to drop in a bit of olive oil or butter with the mushrooms.)

Take the pan out of the oven; assuming the chicken is done, put the chicken on a plate and cover it (with foil or another plate.) Pour the rest of the contents of the baking pan (oil, tomatoes, juices) into the stovetop pan and stir.

Now add:
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
a tablespoon of paprika
a tablespoon or more of those chopped hot peppers they put on hoagies
and a quarter to a half cup of heavy cream.

(You will want to shake that cream before you pour, in case it's separated.)
(You will want to make sure the little cardboard carton is really totally closed before you shake it. Maybe pinch the foldout spout.)

It's all bubbly now - slip some of the chicken into the sauce (it's probably won't all fit) and turn down the heat, and simmer it a little while - like 6 minutes or so, which is how long it takes to make egg noodles.

Seriously, this is good. Don't use canned tomatoes when there are fresh ones around. And seriously - hoagie peppers.

AND it took 36 minutes from walking into the kitchen.

Go me.

Snort-worthy.

2009-09-30T23:55:00.002-04:00

Is this mean? I didn't MAKE it, but it did make me laugh (and, Lord Christ, could I use a good laugh.) when I saw it at Andrew Zimmern's blog.

Edited this way, it's funny (and vulgar, of course.) Watching the show itself is quite surreal, a great example of the little-known genre, Cooking Shows of the Absurd.

Enjoy.

2009-09-28T22:16:00.002-04:00

We didn't make pretzels today, which bums me out a little; we did run errands, have Korean food for lunch, go out a kick a ball around (me and Ian at first, then we found some other neighborhood urchins to join in.)

Ian and I did another of our favorite activities - the Bug Safari - and saw our first woolly bear - which is to say, my first of the season, Ian's first of his life. But the real highlight: we bagged a gigantic praying mantis, such a dazzling shade of green. He seemed to like us (perhaps Stockholm Syndrome?) and let me wear him as a glorious fashion accessory for quite a long time. Style note: spring green looks great with turquoise! Who knew?

(Ian and Eric also tried him on - he headed straight for Eric's beard, putting an end to that fashion collaboration, and then risked his life by tickling the back of Ian's neck.)

We nestled him among the grape leaves near the front porch.

I made this for dinner, which seemed a little "eh" when I served it, but which grew on us as the meal went on. I think it's a good platform for experimentation.

2009-09-28T09:38:00.002-04:00

okay, voting is open on the Mobbies. You can vote once per day in "Best Overall Blogs" without signing in; to vote in categories, you have a register as a Sunpapers user. (I did it this morning - it's not too timeconsuming.)

If you're kind enough to vote for the whole Mitchell family, be aware that my brother's blog is Beer in Baltimore, NOT beerinbaltimore.com.

Thanks for taking a moment to do it - I'm not in the habit of bothering people about things like this.

recipe: what we will make on Monday

2009-09-26T00:21:00.002-04:00

stolen from Snackrelgious.
(Can a person have a crush on a blog?)

Soft Pretzels
Recipe from The Petit Appetit Cookbook: Easy, Organic Recipes to Nurture Your Baby and Toddler by Lisa Barnes
Makes 48 2-3 inch pretzels

This recipe is milk free, nut free, and vegetarian. 2 pretzels have 80 calories, if you're interested. It's a good to make with older kids who can roll and shape dough, paint on egg, or sprinkle salt!

1 1/2 c. warm water
2 packages active dry yeast
2 T. sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
2 c. whole wheat pastry flour
2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
coarse salt, poppy seeds, or sesame seeds for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 425 F. I used a baking sheet with a silicone mat, but you could also use parchment paper on the baking sheet.

Put the yeast in a large bowl with the warm water. Stir until yeast is dissolved. Add the sugar, salt, flours, and one of the eggs. Stir with a fork to combine into a dough. Turn out onto a floury surface and knead until it is elastic (maybe 2-3 minutes), adding a little more flour if it's very sticky.

Tear off small pieces of the dough and roll into any shape you want (classic pretzels, circles, hearts, twists). You know what would be cute? Xs and Os -- they stand for "hugs and kisses" AND you can play edible tic-tac-toe!

Place an inch or two apart on your baking sheet. Brush with the second egg (beaten) and sprinkle with whatever you want to sprinkle them with.

Bake 8-12 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve with your favorite mustard.

Jeanette is the complete bomb of the blogosphere.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please let me introduce my brother.

2009-09-16T22:12:00.003-04:00

My brother, Sandy Mitchell, writes a blog: beerinbaltimore@blogspot.com He writes lots of other things too - magazine and newspaper articles, nonfiction books.

But his blog is notable this week because:
within two days, it was

1) nominated for a Mobby, the Baltimore Sun's award for Maryland's Outstanding Blogs

and

2) selected for a Best of Baltimore award by the Baltimore City Paper!

No matter how much you love beer, we promise you it's not as much as this guy. For the past year and a half, Alexander Mitchell IV has been keeping us entertained and informed with his Beer in Baltimore blog, a frequently updated collection of short thoughts on beer--more nuts, bolts, and flavor than philosophy--news postings, and links. Sure, he dotes on Max's a bit much, but that's to be expected, and more importantly, this is a guy that just doesn't stop thinking about beer. We guarantee you'll get a whole new appreciation for it, too.

It won for "Best Drinking Blog" in the Nightlife category.

I am very proud - I've been a City Paper devotee since my college days (OMG, that's almost 30 years!!) - so much so that I sought out the Balt City Paper even when I lived in suburban DC and worked in the district.

I know his blog is good, and now a few thousand other people will know too.

Incidentally, I too have been nominated for a Mobby. I have no illusions about winning - the list includes a bunch of blogs I read regularly, and they all do good work and deserve the award more - but it's an honor just to be nominated.

Voting starts Sept 28.

Just sayin'.

fascinating (via Charm City Craft Mafia.blogspot.com)

2009-09-10T09:47:00.002-04:00

Apologies by Proxy
Hampdenfest
Saturday, September 12, noon-2 p.m.
In front of MINÁS, 815 W. 36th Street Baltimore, MD 21211

HAVE YOU BEEN WRONGED?

ARE YOU OWED AN APOLOGY?

IN THREE MINUTES, TELL US THE TALE AND WE WILL GIVE YOU YOUR OVERDUE APOLOGY

The concept behind “Apology By Proxy” is simple: In three minutes or
less, you tell the tale of an event regarding which you feel you are
owed an apology. We then give you that apology. You keep your apology
for when you need it, and, when you are ready, you pass the apology on
to someone else who needs one.

Apologies have been given by proxy:

for boyfriends
for wives
for drama queen roommates
for schoolyard bullies
for parents
for sisters
for God
for the U.S. healthcare system
for bosses
for a dry cleaner slut
for the NY art world
for landlords
for family businesses
for being lied to at work
for yourself

What began as a small piece of performance art has shown itself to be
a powerful tool for change and learning. The sudden moment of intense
intimacy with a complete stranger can be overwhelming. The apology is
genuine and, through some mysterious force, it works. Tears were shed,
hugs were given. “I’m Sorry” proves to be a potent phrase.

The Apology desk is often approached on a lark with an attitude of
gaiety, with stories that have often been honed, over the years, into
humorous tales, although the original hurt is still there. While
receiving the apology, the layers of concealment fall away as the
words “I’m Sorry” wash across the face of the apologee. Events can be
10, 20, even 30 years old, and still the apology that never came is
needed.

Some excellent choices for your apron

2009-09-09T23:20:00.000-04:00

2009-09-09T16:43:00.001-04:00

toothpastefordinner.com

creative endeavors

2009-09-01T21:11:00.004-04:00

1. My brother was so smitten with my new banner that he asked me to make him one. How many readings does it take you to spot the Classic Betsy Mistake?

Source Credits: Photo. "delicious beer" by Tim Boyd, http://Timboyd.com/info. Nicked off flickr and used through a Creative Commons liscence 2.0.

Don't freak out. I made him a corrected one.

2. While plowing through videos for this week's no singing, no dancing service, I found this, which sums up some of what I've been going through this year:

3. The famous macaroon recipe:

Preheat oven to 325, move racks to center.
Line a cookie sheet with foil or parchment, and then grease that well. Seriously. These things are unbelievably sticky.

In a bowl, combine:
14 oz sweetened condensed milk
14 oz flaked coconut
a scant teaspoon of salt
a slug of vanilla extract.

That's it. Check the weights and volumes on your cans of milk and bags of coconut. Don't forget the salt. You can throw in some chocolate chips if you like.

Drop by spoonfuls onto the foil. Bake for 8 minutes, then start checking on the cookies. I like the brown chewy carmelized parts around the edges, so I always make small ones and leave them in as long as I can stand it without actually burning them. (They're safe to eat unbaked, so how long you cook them is strictly a personal taste thing.)

When you think they are pretty close to done, remove them from the over and slide the foil or parchment, with the cookies on it, onto a cooling rack. (If you leave them on the pan, the heat from the pan will send them over the edge from delectable to inedible.) Once they cool, they're pretty easy to peel off the foil. Usually.

Make a zillion cookies, because I make really small ones. (More brown surface area.)

To make these a grown-up cookie, don't add the chocolate chips. Flatten the spoonfuls a little so the size and shape are somewhat uniform. Once the cookies have started to cook, melt some chocolate chips with some butter in the microwave, and dip the cookies in the melted chocolate.

I have only ever used cheap sugar-sweetened coconut from the baking aisle for these - I can only imagine how dreamy they would be with good-quality, less-sugared coconut.

4. Baked Zucchini bread yesterday afternoon. It's a massive hit. My friend Sarah brought me HALF of the largest zucchini in world history (plus some other homegrown delights) and I made 3 big loaves.

Recipe variations: I substituted whole wheat flour for half the all-purpose flour, was quite generous with the shredded zucchini, and since I found I had no orange zest, threw in some canned crushed pineapple and a dash of lemon extract.

5. Made pineapple sorbet for dessert.
recipe: put canned pineapple juice in your ice cream maker. Flip the switch. The end.

Crossing the Bar (Cookie)

2009-08-25T21:53:00.004-04:00

I had a big baking night the other night, and now I can tell you about it, because the surprise-ee was completely surprised.

When someone is leaving church staff for greener pastures, we usually do a couple of things - we arrange to pray for them in Sunday services, and we usually have some sort of party/meal/something.

Well. On Thursday, my co-workers and most of their spouses/kids/grandkids pretty much kidnapped our departing youth pastor and took him to the beach for a picnic (plus all that beachy junk like building sand castles, swimming, poking dead stuff, reapplying sunscreen.) The weather was beautiful, and the trip was quite grand.

(Until I locked the keys in the minivan after dark, but that's a different story. Even that worked out fine, actually.)

My contributions to the picnic were (oh, guess:) .....right, desserts.

1. Brownies (from a mix, nothing to get excited about, which is not to say people didn't enjoy them - in fact, they were the first thing to disappear.)

2. Macaroons, but baked in one huge square. I didn't know if these would work out, but the top and bottom did brown up nicely. (Recipe another time, I promise.)

3.
Flapjack: This did not come out - they didn't hold together at all, so people scooped up handfuls and kind of poured the loose chunks into their mouths. (This works okay on the beach; it would not be so great in someone's carpeted living room.) I do believe the linked recipe is wrong. It needs more sticky stuff. This (when it's good) is the favorite dessert of The New Guy; a traditional British baked good comprised of rolled oats, butter, and cane syrup. I wrote about my earlier misadventures with flapjack on this blog, but I'll be darned if I can find it now.

4. Shortbread: This came out great. I followed this recipe except I spread the whole recipe-worth of dough/batter into a square pan. After chilling and scoring, I baked it at 350 for about 30-40 minutes, until it started to turn just the lightest, most delicate shade of brown.

I tasted a bite, and decided that it was so good it needed some chocolate - so I melted about a quarter cup of semi-sweet chips, a tablespoon of butter, and a scant teaspoon of instant espresso powder.

[Melting chocolate in the microwave: put everything in a bowl and nuke for 30 seconds. It won't look any different. Remove from micro and stir with a fork for 30 seconds. Nuke and stir again as needed. It's hard to screw this up.]

I spread that in a thin layer over the baked, cooled shortbread.

It was super. Even after it got some sand on it.

More Vital Music news:

2009-08-19T23:37:00.002-04:00

This morning, 8:30am. Scene: my car again.

Me: I don't have any of your cds in the car right now - would you like to hear the music I've been listening to?

Ian: Yes, I would.

I cue a cut from M.I.A. Kala.

M.I.A. - New Music - More Music Videos

Not this one, actually. The Mango Pickle song.

I glance into the back seat when we stop at the light. Ian's eyes are WIDE, and he is gripping the armrests of his carseat. He is smiling - it's the same face he made the first time he had solid food.

with the song stylings of Ian MH

2009-08-18T23:11:00.002-04:00

Scene: my car, 5pm

Ian: can we listen to The Candyman?
Me: I don't have the ipod, but we can sing it.

Ian leads off:
Who can take the sunrise?
Sprinkle it with glue?
Cover it in...um, marigooooolds..too?
The candyman!
The candyman can, cuz he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good!
And the world tastes good 'cuz the candyman thinks it shooooooooooooooooooooooould!

Ian: Did you hear what I did, Mom? I was mostly singing the one version, but that was the ending of that other version! I just threw that part in. For fun. Just for fun.

Ian continues: In this version, the first part of the bridge is really loud.
me: how loud? Give me an example.

Ian: THE CANDYMAN MAKES
EVERYTHING HE BAKES
SATISFYING AND DELICIOUS!
TALK ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD WISHES!
you can even eat the dishes!

See, that part's very quiet! Almost whispering.

Me: You are an awesome singer.
Ian: Yes. I am.

it was open!!!

2009-08-09T22:36:00.005-04:00

We finally hit the farmstand (yes, the one I've been reading about since February!) when it was open!

Within, say, 2 miles of my house.

these are lemon cucumbers. I have no idea what they taste like or what one might do with them. But I believe Heidi at 101cookbooks does. So I bought some.

don't know why these sentences are coming out underlined. Just ignore it. That's what I'm doing.

Oh, okay, if you insist.

Cherry Tomatoes! It's whats for dinner!

Our haul, for $10 - 2 Zucchinis and one yellow squash, a pint of lemon cucumbers, a pint of sungold tomatoes, and the two cutest little cantaloupes in the history of organic farming. So dinner was cantaloupe (appetizer, and Ian asked for more for his main course), corn and green beans (not local, from Delaware, left over from our trip to the beach) and piles of perfectly ripe raw cherry tomatoes with nothing, not even salt.

I hope they're open tomorrow.