When the going gets tough

the tough bake pie. Really good pie. Lemon meringue pie. With lemons. And meringue.



And then, life gets a whole lot better.

The end.

Hot cross buns

I'll be making these hot cross buns tonight so we can eat them early tomorrow morning. Not only do they rise overnight in the fridge, they are ridiculously good.

Smells even better than it looks . . .

I love bread, especially when I make it myself and the smell of it baking fills my entire house.

Kasvispiirakka

Yes, we managed to cook something for dinner tonight that I can't pronounce. Kasvispiirakka is Finnish for vegetarian pie. Another possible English translation: scrumptious.

For this dish you start by mixing a pie crust with lots of butter and sour cream. While the crust is chilling you shred 6 cups of winter vegetables. We used leeks, carrots, turnips, cabbage and parsnips. (I don't know that I would attempt this much shredding without a food processor.)

Then you cook the vegetables in more butter on very high heat. You mix in cooked rice and cheese and then assemble the pie and weave a lattice top. Brush the whole assembled pie with an egg wash and that pie dough will puff and flake like crazy.

Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes and you have the perfect winter comfort food. Clearly the Finns have experience with this sort of thing.

Want to make it? I'm too lazy to write the whole recipe out but I think this link will take you to the recipe.

Hyvää ruokahalua!

Homemade popcorn

The other night I convinced dear husband to make popcorn in a cast iron pan. From my nest of wool blankets in the family room, I could hear the first kernels popping and then the pan shaking over the stove.

Once I heard the popping stop, I shuffled downstairs and found my usual bowl.

I like popcorn with all kinds of different things, particularly m and m candies and sea salt. However, if you want a real gourmet combination try adding melted butter, sea salt, herbes de provence, and shaved Parmesan cheese.

Yum.

Oh weekend

So it has been a perfectly wonderful Saturday--farmer's market, Bee's dance class, a clean house, a quick run, grocery shopping and a visit to Penzey's, finished off with a fantastic bbq (beer can chicken on the grill, my mom's special potato salad, romaine with ranch dressing, and grilled corn).

For dessert, I finally got to try out my new maryann cake pan, and filled it with vanilla pudding and fresh berries.

Unfortunately my Saturday is lasting a little bit longer than I would prefer, because Cheeks McGoo is wide awake and declining to go back to bed. She has been sent downstairs to read the newspaper with her father until she is good and bored--and tired.

My measure of success

Tonight, my husband patiently showed Bee how to make homemade calzones. She was covered in flour from wrist to elbow by the time they were finished, but she successfully helped roll out the circles of dough, add the filling, crimp the edges, and paint the egg wash on top. (And here's how crazy about food we are--this weekend we also made vegetable enchiladas, pumpkin cookies, and the piece d'resistance: from scratch "everything" bagels.)

This afternoon, I drew the outline of a tree on a big sheet of packing paper and gave Bee some tempura paints in fall colors. She spent a long time carefully painting autumn leaves. I would say she leans toward the surreal in art.

We went to Starbucks. I had given up all caffeine for most of this pregnancy, but recently have been indulging in a chai latte on the weekend. Baby Girl seems to like the sugar boost.

We cleaned the house. My husband changed burnt out light bulbs and dragged the vacuum over the rugs. Bee helped dust. I vacuumed the floors and even mopped, a little. Our main living room/dining room/playroom is adorned with Halloween decorations. The decorations are up early; the house cleaning was long overdue.

It's funny how these little tasks fill me with more pride than any work accomplishment ever has.

Happy 4th of July!

Hope you get to eat as much cake as I did! (And that was a lot. . .)

Generosity

My dear colleague at work brought me 20 fresh eggs from her grandmother's chickens today.

I have been singing "Omelette. . . " to the tune of "Alouette" ever since.

Oh, my sandwich . . .

It is a little ridiculous how much of my morning is spent thinking about lunchtime, but that is the fate of a pregnant woman. It's all about the food.

Right now, for instance, my dear husband is making lasagna; prepped tonight, it can be baked tomorrow night with enough time left over for a family dinner. Of course, we had to pick up Lebanese take-out for dinner tonight so that he has time to make tomorrow night's feast, which seems a little counter-productive, but oh well. The smell of sauteed mushrooms, garlic, onions, and bechamel sauce is making me dizzy with hunger, and I just ate dinner.

But I really wanted to talk to you about my sandwich: A couple of weeks ago, I found a new mantra in one of the many woman's magazines to which I endlessly subscribe. The subject of the article was about healthy lunches and argued something along the lines of, "It takes just as much time to go to the deli, order a sandwich and bring it back to work as it does to pack your own lunch at home." This is such a simple concept, but I can't tell you how many times I have talked myself into picking something up on my lunch break because I was feeling too rushed before leaving the house for work.

As a result, making the perfect sandwich has become my new morning goal, especially because the lunch options around my office are limited indeed. I have been stealing five minutes and slapping together lettuce, tomato, pickles (yes, it's a cliche, but I can't help myself), cheese, and occasionally even some lunch meat. And oh those sandwiches are good.

In Season: Spinach

This is how we triple wash.

After a barren winter, spring vegetables are beginning to arrive in the local market. The temperature outside is much more wintry than spring-like, but despite the persistent chill spinach, radishes, green onions, and new potatoes can be found in all the market stalls.

I love spinach. We put it on our pizza, in salads, with any kind of pasta, stuffed in crepes, on veggie melts, and tomorrow morning . . . in a nice cheesy omelet.

Tasmania

We went to the the market this weekend (I sometimes feel like this opening line is my own personal version of "once upon a time"). Bee and I perused the weekly selection together, shopping list in hand. The stand that we frequent is owned by a pair of sisters-in-law: one young and bubbly, the other older, and a bit more to the point.

Both of them are besotted with Bee and give her oranges, strawberries, or some other small treat each week. This week, Bee was outfitted with her own small shopping bag, and the older sister took it upon herself to fill Bee's bag with almost one of everything. These extreme generosity would make me feel guilty except that I think we are their best customers.

David and I spend an exorbitant amount of money, by Eastern European standards anyway, on fresh fruits and vegetables. We usually buy apples, bananas, pears, strawberries, and a surfeit of clementines. The vegetables vary week by week; since we mostly eat vegetarian they are inevitably the main course.

When our saleslady rang up the total, she was so aghast at the price that she insisted there must be a mistake and re-weighed everything again. The first price was correct, and she was even more horrified when we happily paid it. She continued to add more freebies to Bee's shopping bag until we were able to make our escape.

Among the treats she gave Bee was a small handful of cherries. I noticed the cherries because they were so expensive, forty dollars a kilogram. Fragile, out of season fruit costs a premium. These cherries however, were beautiful. So red they were almost black, as big as my thumb, and (I know since I stole one from Bee) perfectly sweet. The delicate cargo was still in its shipping crate and the label indicated that they came from Tasmania--sweet southern hemisphere cherries all the way from the bottom of the world. I cannot imagine how they got here, most likely by air. Perhaps carried by angels. I almost bought some, but even I have my limits when it comes to buying fruit.

Igloo Cake

The cake came out of the pan in one piece! Happy winter, indeed.

Leftovers

Some meals are always better the next day.  

Last night David made lasagna with bechamel sauce, spinach, and mushrooms.  It was delicious, but even better tonight--hardly any dishes!

We bought genuine Italian lasagna noodles; the proof is in the instructions on the box.  I have transcribed them exactly, for full effect:

"COOKING INSTRUCTION: First time will be prepared the bechamel and bolognese sauces.  Spread some gravy and bechamel on the buttered bottom of baking-tin.  Put dry lasagne one by one putting between them gravy, bechamel and parmesan inside the buttered baking-tin, carrefully covering the last one with a good quantity of parmesan and few pieces of butter.  Then cover the baking-tin with an aluminum foil.  Bake at 180 C for about 20 minutes, remove the foil and bake it for another 10 minutes."

I loved the alliteration of "bechamel" and "buttered bottom".  True poetry, indeed.

The menu tonight

Appetizers:  

Bruschetta with tomato, roasted garlic, parmesan, and a drizzle of olive oil

Antipasto: green olives, sun dried tomatoes, and pickled red peppers 

(Bee loved the bruschetta and green olives.)

Dinner:

Salad with sun-dried tomato dressing

Vegetarian pizza

White pizza with spinach

Dessert:

Betty Crocker's one spoon chocolate cake

(We have been making this for company a lot recently, as it is very tasty. You can prepare it in 10 minutes and then it only bakes for a half an hour.)

Verdict:  everything was very good, but pizza from scratch for a crowd is really too much effort

Vegetable stock

The apartment has been filled with delicious smells all weekend. 

Last night, after Bee went to bed, David made peach-blueberry buckle. It's kind of like a cobbler, but with a firmer topping, similar to a pie crust.  (I hate to admit it, because I like to think that baking is purely my domain, but David's actually quite a good baker, taking after his father in this regard.)

Every time we buy peaches they seem to encounter some kind of misadventure on the way home, which requires us to cook them immediately.  They have been squashed in the basket (peach cobbler), the vendor cheated us with overripe ones (peach cake), and then yesterday, the bag we were carrying them in broke open while we were still shopping. The peaches were rolling all over the place, and we scrambled to find them.

We bought a couple pounds of blueberries at the market as well, so I searched for a dessert that would incorporate both.  Finally, around 10 pm, the buckle finished baking; we dished it out hot with vanilla ice cream.  Words cannot describe its juicy, purple-stained perfection.  

But really, I didn't want to talk about desserts, but rather vegetables.  Right now my vegetable stock just finished boiling.  In the United States, at Safeway (the one that also serves Starbucks inside and has a great bakery next door that sells triple chocolate scones--that heavenly depository of all that is convenient and wonderful) sells low sodium organic vegetable broth. No need to add water, just flip the top, pour it into a pot, and you are ready to start making soup. I would order cases of the broth if I could have it shipped here, which I can't, because it makes soup a very viable weeknight dinner option.  

Now that it is September, and fall is coming (never mind that it is still 85 degrees outside) I wanted to make my favorite corn and vegetable soup with fat dumplings.  On Monday.  This is going to be possible because I am making my own stock today.  It's currently simmering on the stove.  Vegetable stock is easy, and not even very time consuming to prepare, it just needs to simmer on the stove for an hour.  But this way, tomorrow night I will be eating my soup and dumplings before 10 pm.

I had to substitute a few vegetables in the stock recipe--leeks for green onions and celeriac and parsnip root for celery, but I think the flavor should be similar.  Now that the stock is in the pot there is nothing left to do except keep an eye on it, stir occasionally, and avoid cleaning up the disaster that Bee created in the living room before heading off to her nap.  

On the weekends, David and I cook constantly.  With a toddler, we try to sneak in a little food prep here and there throughout the day, as to make the actual meal preparation a little less arduous.  That's why, when David wakes up from his nap  (the man loves his sleep) he is going to be caramelizing a whole lotta onions for me for our pizza tonight.

Abundance

Our local farmer's market shopping list from this morning.  Almost everything is from farms in the countryside, within 100 miles:

Vegetables

Hot peppers

Red peppers

Parsley root

Celeriac

Carrots

Red peppers

Potatoes

Onions

Mushrooms*

Butternut squash

Squash

Tomatoes

Basil 

Parsley

Horseradish root (no idea what I will do with this, but I have never seen it sold fresh so I bought one)

Fruit

Blueberries (probably the last week for them)

Apples* (brought in from Italy)

Peaches (the very, very last from in-country)

Grapes (the harvest is in full swing)

Kiwi* (from somewhere far, far away)

*not local

I've posted our meal list on a sidebar, so you can see what we plan to cook.  All the root vegetables are for vegetable stock because I want to make my first fall soup this week.  (Never mind that it's still over 80 degrees outside.)

Beware of Darlicks

A fast snack: popcorn on the stove, (pop with a few tablespoons of grape seed oil) sprinkled with smoky chipotle popcorn seasoning.  I like chipotle because it's spicy yet sweet at the same time.  It's perfect for the evening munchies.  

David and I have been watching the BBC remake of Dr. Who and just finished Season 1 tonight.  It was fantastic--laugh out loud funny with smart dialogue and even the odd scary moment.  Why don't they make more programs like that these days?

Fast Food

A great use for leftover eggplant parmesan:  Stack slices of eggplant on fresh ciabatta bread (we used olive ciabatta), add a little extra tomato sauce, toast the sandwich in the the broiler, and voila! Leftover eggplant sandwiches beat meatball subs any day.  We had a fresh green salad on the side, nothing fancy, just some tomatoes and black olives.  

Pizza Pizza!

Usually we plan out our meals for the week every Saturday and try to stick to a menu. It saves us daily trips to the grocery store and the market. This week, however, I didn't manage to organize very well and we seem to have run out of meal plans.  

I was begging David to get carry out pizza for dinner and he wanted to make pad thai. We settled for making our own pizza at home and I'm glad we did.  

Homemade pizza is a family staple.  Usually we make it from scratch on Saturday nights, when we have the afternoon to set the dough to rise.  Short on time tonight, we made beer crust--which is a quick rising dough involving salt, flour, baking powder and a bottle of beer.  It turns into a yeasty flavorful crust, the perfect base to top with vegetables and fresh mozzarella.  

Bee was parading around the apartment singing "Pizza, pizza!"  At the end of the meal, we all had tomato sauce smeared on our chins and smiles on our faces.