Yoga – week 2

15 days and 17 classes. +2, woot! Which I’m going to need, since by Wednesday I’ll be back to even because of skipping classes both tomorrow and Wednesday for volleyball and ultimate, respectively.

I’m still debating what I’m going to do once my 30 days are over. I think I would like to keep it up at least a few times a week, but scheduling my life around yoga classes is definitely a bit of a pain. My plan right now is to try and find some podcasts and try to follow along at home. Do you know of any good ones?

You remember those shelves I was raving about, oh, a few months ago now? So I finally finished the remaining couple of coats of clearcoat, and convinced Dan to help me put them up over the weekend. I like how they look. The only problem? The @#$^&ing jars don’t fit. Yes, you know, the jars that these shelves were specifically made to house. [Actually, that's not entirely true - they fit if I put them upside down, and I'm very tempted to do that - but for now, at least I put the old jars in the shelves to free up some pantry shelf space] I measured, you know. I measured more than once. And tested it after the shelves were partially assembled. ARGH! I know he was trying to help, but Dan’s assurances of “oh, it’s ok, everyone screws up their first woodworking project… they’re just 13 when they do it” didn’t help the matters much. I know it’s not the end of the world, but I’m just frustrated because this is not something I can redo until spring, since I need the garage and the low overnight was -25. The garage is slightly warmer, but not enough for me to sit there for more than 2 minutes.

In other updates – I’ve found two fantastic bread recipes. One for a baguette, which I’ll discuss later, and one for a danish buttermilk bread. The buttermilk bread is from this book, and is great because I’ve never been able to find buttermilk in quantities smaller than 1 liter (yes, I know I could fake it with milk and a sour agent, but I like the real stuff), and it’s a delicious way to use up leftover buttermilk from another recipe. It’s a pretty simple bread, but the bread has a wonderfully soft texture, and the cardamom adds a little bit of something to put it out of this world.

Danish Buttermilk Bread

2 1/4 tsp yeast
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/3 c lukewarm water
1/4 c unsalted butter
4 c white flour
2 1/2 tsp salt
2-3 tsp caraway powder or cardamom powder (I used cardamom)
1 c buttermilk

Mix yeast, sugar and warm water, let dissolve until foamy (5-10 minutes). Soften the butter and whisk it in.
Mix flour, salt and powder in mixing bowl.
Warm buttermilk to lukewarm and mix in with yeast mixture.
Make a well in the center of the flour and mix in the liquids. Beat/mix for 2 minutes, adding very little warm buttermilk to make a spongy, elastic dough.
Put dough into an oiled bowl, cover with a towel and set that in a bowl of warm water for 1 hour.
Beat down and put in an oiled bread pan, brush with oil or butter and let rise again in warm water, for an hour.
Preheat oven to 400 F and bake for 20 minutes; turn the heat down to 325 and bake for another 30 minutes.

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Chickens

I have a bone to pick with chickens. In particular, the cooking thereof. The last many times I’ve made roast chicken, it’s taken a lot longer than I feel it should have. But, perhaps, that may have had something to do with me not exactly following a recipe. Fine – today, chickens were on sale, so I picked one up for dinner. I found a recipe in a french cookbook that involved onions stuffed under the skin and obscene amounts of butter (even when I used half of what the recipe called for) slathered on top. I followed the recipe to a T, even including preheating the oven before putting the chicken in – and when I took it out at the designated time, the thighs were still severely underdone. 20 more minutes in the oven fixed the problem, but now I’m stuck with a real pickle. What is it about chickens that makes my oven freak out? I could blame it on a faulty thermostat, but every. single. other recipe comes out perfect within exactly the time specified. Maybe my oven is speciesist and hates chickens? Or maybe it loves chickens so much it will do anything to keep them in a little bit longer.

Other than the cooking time issues, though, this recipe is absolutely fantastic. Fall-off-the-bone tender meat, sinfully crispy skin, and a delicate taste of roasted onions taste infused throughout. I highly recommend it!

In other new recipe news, I found and made this soup recipe today. Dan and I are both self-confessed avocado fanatics. So when I saw a giant bag of avocados (probably close to 15) at the reject shelf in Farm Boy on the weekend, I jumped at the chance. At $1.99, it was the same price as the two “normal” avocados I had already put in my basket, and after groping the bag for a while I was fairly certain I could find more than 2 useable avocados in there. Well, we ended up with a whole bag of perfectly ripe avocados. I don’t know who put them in the reject pile, but THANK YOU – and please keep it up! *hint hint* The only modification I made was to add some chili flakes.

The cat experiment is going along reasonably well. We’re no longer greeted at the door when we come home in the evening – I always suspected that our cats only loved us for our food-distributing abilities, but it’s a little bit hurtful to see this finally confirmed. I still think they’re eating more than their normal daily share, so we’ll see whether they start getting chubby, and maybe go back to the feeders at that point. After the food coma of the last few days, Shakey was slow enough for me to snap this picture.

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When Maria meets apples

Building on the success of strawberry picking, I’ve been meaning to try apple picking for a while. When a coworker mentioned an apple orchard where you could also buy fresh donuts and cider, I was sold. I canvassed interest among the girls (because, let’s face it, even if they guys would care to go – and they didn’t – they would never care enough to plan it) and picked a date. And then I was faced with a dilemma – we could go to the highly recommended orchard an hour’s drive away. Or we could go to the unknown orchard whose “U-Pick” sign I had spotted on my drive to work. Convenience won out, so we headed to the orchard that was close by.

All of us were a little bit surprised when told that this was probably the last weekend of apple picking, and they only had one variety of apples left (Cortland). Isn’t apple picking supposed to be a fall activity, extending well into October? Well, apparently not. Next year, I will get an earlier start and go in August, when a particularly tasty-sounding variety is said to be ripening.

So, what happens when I am let loose in an orchard, with a view to pick some apples to eat and cook with?

We end up with good eating apples, to be kept in a box somewhere cool.

Times three layers.

We also end up with cooking apples – the lightly dented specimen which will end their life in apple jelly, and possibly apple pie or crumble.

To join their brethren which have already been turned into cinnamon apple jam.

Yes, those are 500 mL jars. Missing is the one other jar that is already in the fridge, because it didn’t seal properly.

We also end up with two good-sized grocery bags. Lucky for me, these are orders that were placed by the ladies who couldn’t make it.

And that’s what I filled my time with on Saturday, from 2 p.m. until laaaaaaaaaaaaate into the evening.

Oh, there may have been some of this

and this

involved, too. But let us not point fingers at the helpful parties who guiltily helped me demolish some of that zucchini bread and caramel popcorn.

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Accomplishment-ful weekend

I swear I am solar-operated. After a general funk I’d sunk into during the last couple of weeks, my energy came back this weekend, following in the footsteps of glorious sunshine.

We kicked off the weekend on Friday by resuming our dinner party tradition. Given how much I like cooking, and Dan socializing, we try to have people over for dinner parties as often as we can. Which, last year, was almost never. Hopefully we’re back on track.

Cooking a full sit-down dinner for 6-8 people is much different from making a table of nibbles for a crowd, and I enjoy the challenge. So many new recipes to try! Although this time, for the main course I decided to go with the combination we stumbled on a few weeks earlier – Serious Eats’ Coriander-Orange-Scented Red Lentil Soup with Smitten Kitchen’s Cauliflower and Caramelized Onion Tart. A mixed salad topped with slices of peach and aged white cheddar added some freshness. Being a sucker for chocolate, I had to finish with Ms. Humble’s decadent Frangelico Dark Chocolate Mousse, which has been in my “to make” pile for ages, waiting for an appropriate occasion.

Given how much I talk about cooking, you may wonder why I never post any recipes like all those food blogs. Well, part of it is certainly laziness – I don’t have the time to sit there and type out the recipe, and make food all pretty for pictures. The other reason is that in general, I’ll only try a recipe if I mostly agree with the ingredients/methods used in it – and I don’t want to plagiarise by copying on my blog word for word a recipe someone else came up with. Which means that most of my entries would look like the above paragraph.

Until today. Well, Friday. Because I actually came up with an appetizer so delicious I just had to share. Especially since it seems like something I will have a hard time keeping away from in the summer. I’m very bad at coming up with names for things, and Dan is in the middle of his assisted nap now, so I’ll just have to call these Cucumber and Crab slices.

1 package imitation crab meat

3-4 Tbsp sweet chili sauce

1-2 Tbsp mayonnaise

1 tsp paprika

salt & pepper to taste

cucumber, cut into fairly thick slices

1. Very finely chop the “crab”. Actually, next time I think I will use my food processor to try to get a more light and fine consistency.

2. Add in the chili sauce, mayo, paprika and salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly. Let sit in the fridge for a couple of hours – I actually made it ahead and left in the fridge overnight.

3. Slice the cucumber, and heap 1/2 to 1 Tbsp (amount depends on how much… girth your cucumber has) of the crab mixture on each slice.

4. Bring with you outside and enjoy with a nice refreshing glass of white wine. Mmmmm.

On Saturday, all the boys abandoned us to hold a bachelor party for Mike – so, in typical fashion, the girls retaliated by holding a girls’ night with lots of delicious food and ample wine.

Today, I finally got around to making that postcard board I’ve been dreaming about for so long. I have to say it was quite straightforward, although not kind to my back since everything was done on the living-room floor. The only non-trivial part was keeping the ribbons aligned parallel to each other, and even that was more time-consuming than actually complicated. I’m incredibly happy with how the board turned out! And now I’m another step closer to having the kitchen look like I want it to look!

The good news? It looks awesome. The bad news? I’m going to have to make another one soon, because apparently we have enough postcards to pretty much fill up this one already. Thanks to all you lovely people for all the sent postcards – can you now see just how much I love getting postcards?!

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