Playing catch up

I't been a busy couple of weeks around the Deplume household! Last week, I used my Perfect Brownie pan for the first time.

As you can see, I had some leakage issues. I know that the answer is to line the pan in foil, but I resisted, as that seems like more work than just using a regular pan and cutting the brownies with a knife. People love these things, apparently, but not me. 

Then, I decided to make my daughter a cake for her 8th birthday. In a silicone bundt pan. It was given to me by a family member a while back, and I thoguht "what the heck? She said it worked fine, she just didn't love it." 

I think that maybe what she meant to say was that it was a miserable waste of silicone. I floured the pan. I used a cookie sheet under it. I followed the directions. But it still fell apart when I tried to de-pan it. To add insult to injury, this tragedy struck while I was trying to also get the house ready for about a dozen people to arrive for the party. 30 minutes before guests were to arrive, I was at the grocery store, buying a premade cake. This failure is still tasty, though. It lived in our refrigerator for a few days, being eaten and referred to as "The Fail Cake"

mmm, fail cake...

In other news, I'm knitting again. It's been slow going, as I keep screwing stuff up. I started a top-down hat on Superbowl Sunday, and it might actually fit when it's all said and done. But it's a beret, and I've never found one that I liked, so who knows what will happen. The yarn sure is pretty, though. 

So that's my last couple of weeks in a nutshell. I cannot wait for the Olympics to start. How about you?

Squash is good, most squash recipes not so much

I grew squash in my garden this summer. I planted too many plants (as usual) and ended up swimming in summer squash, cucumbers and acorn squash. I managed to eat or share all the cucumbers, almost did the same with the summer squash (a few ended up in the composter, poor things). Luckily, acorn squash are a little less picky about time, so the last 5 of them have been waiting patiently for me. Then to top it all off, someone gave me an organic butternut squash last week. They've been sitting on my kitchen table, taking up a bunch of room and mocking me, telling me that I'd have to cook them with brown sugar and butter like everyone else does.

But I'm not one to be bossed around by cucurbits, and I have searched high and low for squash recipes that don't taste like pumpkin pie or that Thanksgiving yam stuff with the marshmallows on top. A while back I stuffed an acorn squash with black beans and ground beef and garlic and cumin and chili powder, topped with cheddar cheese. It was good. Too bad I didn't write down what I did.

This week, determined to use that butternut squash, I found a recipe for Garlicky Baked Butternut Squash that sounded worth a try. I didn't have parsley so I substituted basil and rosemary, and had to use half acorn squash, but overall it turned out really good. Note: acorn squash takes longer to cook than butternut, so nuke the acorn a bit first unless you want acorn lumps in a sea of butternut puree.

Best part about the recipe is that Nigel refused to try it. How is that good, you ask? It means that I get leftovers.

Fisharoni Surprise

It's no secret that I have a deep love for vintage craft magazines. They are glimpses into 20th century American life that you just can't get anywhere else. Lately I have a developed a particular fancy of The Workbasket, for it was not just a craft magazine, but also included gardening and cooking.

The garden section was ever filled with great information about how to store tuberous begonias for re-planting the following spring, and how to prune wisteria so that it will continue to bloom well. But then sometimes it would have a great tidbit like this:

Q. What is the vegetarian diet for venus fly trap plant? -- Mrs. R.G.H., OH
A. As these grow best in living sphagnum moos which decays with fertilizer, give each leaf of fly trap a tiny piece of lean raw beef each week.
(April, 1976, p. 28)

The cooking section relied heavily on recipes sent in from readers, for which they were paid. In 1953, a printed recipe was worth. In 1970, they were still paying $2 for recipes. (They did raise the reward to $5 by 1973 though. Housewives were apparently on to their game.)

While there are lots of good knit and crochet patterns in these volumes, my true enjoyment comes from those $2 recipes. My family and faithful readers will remember my foray into bacon cookies, which came directly from The Workbasket. And upon getting a 1966 issue given to me (thanks, Joy!), I immediately found this gem:

Fisharoni Surprise
1 (1 pound) can salmon, flaked you know, I haven't eaten canned salmon in probably 20 years. I could go get a can to try this out
1 medium can baked beans really? maybe I should rethink this recipe
1 medium size can tomato soup oh hell no
2 cups cooked macaroni thus the "roni" in the title. should I really be surprised?
1 medium size onion, chopped and sauteed in butter
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
salt and pepper to taste

also in that same issue was a recipe for Rosy Ham Loaf, which was a combination of ground ham and ground pork, mixed with tomato soup (of course!) and dry mustard, and topped with pineapple. I think that if I ever made this one, I'd need to serve Rosy Perfection Salad from Weight Watchers as well. (go on, click the link. you won't be worry)

Mr. Deplume has come up with the idea to have a dinner party wherein each guest must bring a dish made from a Workbasket recipe. The dishes must be prepared exactly as written. Everyone I talk to thinks this is a grand idea. I think that I would need to have a lot of pizza in the freezer in case we ended up with a inedible table full of canned soups and frankfurters. Look for your invitation in the mail!

A few pictures

I once again have the writer's block. When in bed at night, my mind is FILLED with subjects I want to write about. But as soon as I drift off to slumberland, the blog imp comes and steals them all away from me. So, I manage to write pretty much nothing. Thankfully the camera still works, and each picture is worth a thousand words, so I'm gonna have a slide show.

First, the boy's 5th birthday was at the end of August (so sue me, I'm a slacker). I had a modest goal of serving him a cake not purchased from a grocery store's bakery. He wanted a Transformers-themed party, so I had my work cut out for me. Jumping to my aid was my friend Kaia, who owns a car-shaped pan, so I embarked on my first cake decoration attempt: The Autobot named Bumblebee. I used to think that I'd like to decorate cakes as a hobby. It turns out, I do not. (There's a chance that I would have enjoyed it more if my pastry bag and bag tips hadn't been MIA, forcing me to use only a Ziploc freezer bag and my gumption to frost the cake)

It's completely lopsided, but the boy was happy with it, and it tasted pretty good.

Next, I owe you a picture of my kitchen. There's still a soffit to be built around the sink's vent pipe, but the wallpaper is up and the painting is basically done. Even in its unfinished state, it's a 382% improvement over how it had looked since we moved in. If only I could afford to have the floor and counters replaced....


Lastly for today, I owe you a picture of knitting. However, the knitting I've been doing is too boring to bother turning on the camera. I've recently been knitting neck gaiters (the pattern spells it "gator" but I don't think that's right), one being an exact replica of one I knit in the spring, for Citizen Sam. I don't think I ever posted about this before, so I'll show you a picture of its older twin. (You can see that I made a hat in the spring too. I haven't made another hat yet, but I have more yarn, so it's probably just a matter of time).

If one 9" knitted tube weren't boring enough of a summer knit, I've cast on another one, this one navy blue, for keeping in the family. I think all this k2p2 ribbing is finally giving me the motivation to get back to more challenging projects. So that's good.

I really hope to keep up with the posting, and not put writing off enough for another month. But we'll see. My slacker-fu is very strong.

In which Norm is again stickin' it to the man

We love popcorn here at the Deplume household. I grew up in one of those homes where there was a dedicated popcorn-cooking pan. It was made in large enough quantities that there could be leftovers the next morning. It was a big deal.

However, when I grew up and Mr. Deplume set off to make our own household, we didn't have a popcorn pan. Nor did we have the room in our 465 sqft. apartment to have one, let alone an electric popcorn popper. The only 'real' option for us was to start purchasing microwave popcorn.

Problem is, microwave popcorn isn't any good. It's usually heavily-laden with that nuclear orange diacetyl (the butter-flavored chemical that tastes nothing like any butter I've ever encountered), salt (enough to kill a slug) and hydrogenated oils. Still, we stuck with it, addicted to the ease of plopping a packet into the nuker and pushing the "popcorn" button. I had resigned myself to doing this for the rest of my days.

But lately, we've been having troubles. First, our microwave was too small, so the bag would get stuck, burning the popcorn. Then, we upsized to a larger unit, only to find that the bag would still get stuck if we didn't center it right. There were other problems, all very irritating, which ended with one of two problems: unpopped kernels or charred popcorn-shaped briquettes.

So this morning I was avoiding housework (as usual)and started looking at popcorn poppers. Thanks to The Google's power, I happened upon this recipe for homemade microwave popcorn. I headed to the grocery store to buy popcorn and lunch sacks. Brought them home, threw 1/4 of corn in the bag with a drizzle of canola oil, folded it up, and two minutes later I had popcorn. Popcorn plus bag (both bought at full price in my little neighborhood grocery)cost $.27, which is considerably less than I normally pay for the pre-bagged stuff. Take that, Act II and all your friends on the convenience snack shelves!

I love being cheap-- bargains are fun.

Woot!

I made bread yesterday that does not suck. That would not normally warrant a "woot!" like this post's title, but you might have read in the last weeks of my slump. I've had breads fail at an astonishing rate (nearing 100%) in the last 3 months, so any success is momentous, indeed.

Last week, King Arthur Flour company had free shipping on orders placed that day. I jumped at the chance to buy some proper sourdough starter and some really cute snowflake-shaped cookies sprinkles. After 3 days of feeding and growing my starter, I set out to make a real loaf of real sourdough (I've been through the sourdough deal before, and it didn't go well). Of course, being me, I decided to do it the hard way; the rustic, super-sour, no-added-yeast recipe.

This loaf took time. You feed the starter, wait 4 hours, then put it in the refrigerator for 12 hours. Take it out, add make the bread dough, then let it do its thing for 5-6 hours, then shape the loaves and let them rise for another 2-3 hours before baking. I got nervous after the overnight rest because of the lack of bubbles, so when I added the rest of the flour, I kneaded in about 3/4 teaspoon of instant yeast. I don't know how much that did, but it made me feel better.

Yadda yadda yadda, At 6pm last night, I had fresh-baked sourdough. It's not nearly as sour as the recipe acted like it would be, but I have to take into account that the last sourdough I tasted was brought back from San Francisco. Nothing tastes quite like San Fran sourdough. Anyway, it's good, and I cannot wait to make toast out of it this morning.


In other slump news, I've made two scarves and half a hat with the 9.0mm needles, and I think I'm now ready to stop working with tree branches and go back to normal knitting. I have the toe of a sock to finish, a shawl to work on, and some alpaca that still is calling to me. Time to get back to work.

Slump

I've attempted to bake bread about 4 times this month, and it has gone poorly each time, for different reasons. I used to be good at it. I've tried two different yeast recipes (one is my old standby) and banana bread (again, an old standby recipe). Mr. Deplume thinks I've hit a slump. He swears that all the greats do, and that I'll get over it soon. I hope so. In the meantime, I made chocolate chip banana muffins. I did not screw those up. They are so good, in fact, that I ate about 8 of them in 2 days. oops.

Speaking of slumps, I am still battling my winter knitting funk. To combat this, I picked up some US13 (that's 9 millimeters thick!) needles and have made a couple of garter stitch neck warmers out of *gasp* novelty yarn. It's almost embarrassing. I like to think of myself as an appreciator of the finer side of the craft, but dang if these aren't fast! I don't even know what I want to do with them yet. I just want to have completed projects under my belt.

If I get a minutes later on, I'll take pictures. But I probably won't post them on Ravelry, you know, due to the shame. ;)

I tried a new bread recipe

A while back, on a whim, I checked out Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day from the library. I love fresh bread, but I hate the 3 hours of needing to be home to make it (there's no hard labor with bread when you own a good stand mixer, but it is still time consuming). I skimmed it that night, and thought the book seemed like it was sent from heaven, but I didn't have the tools needed: Namely, a baking stone and a large container for storing the dough. Our old pizza stone cracked a couple of years ago, and we just never bought another. I returned the book, hoping that some day I'd get around to buying a dough bucket.

I finally did that last week. I bought some 4-quart Rubbermaid containers, and I went off in search of the recipe again. I found the basic "master recipe" from the book on the internet and tried it out. This bread in its most basic form makes enough for four round, rustic loaves. My first attempt yielded basically a lump of bread. It was ugly. Very ugly. And heavy. Made good toast, though.

Second attempt was to make pizza dough. This went very well. I will definitely use this method in the future.

Third attempt this morning went much better than the first. [pictures coming, but the batteries on the camera died before I could upload]It is still a little too heavy (I think the original mixture was a little drier than optimal), and I had a devil of a time getting it smooth. But it made for a very good sandwich at lunch (ham and sharp cheddar, with a little brown mustard, if you were curious). And it really does only take about five minutes of actual work, plus some time for proofing and of course baking. I'm going to get the book back out of the library and try again very soon. I also will be buying a stone in the very near future. Who knows, this book might end up a "must buy".

The bread that ate Pittsburgh

I decided to try out a new whole wheat bread recipe today. But after I started adding flour, I realized that I was going to run out of whole wheat, so I had to substitute a couple of cups of white flour in at the end. Of course I had already added enough vital wheat gluten, yeast and dry milk to raise 100% whole wheat dough into fluffy bread. So I wasn't surprised when it rose very quickly and well. But I was not prepared for it to rise another inch-plus in the oven. sheesh! Can you imagine eating a sandwich from this loaf? I hope Mr Deplume and our daughter can find the strength to lug their lunches with them tomorrow to work and school.

I hope it tastes as good as it smells. Although the smell of the bread is somewhat overpowered by the apples and sugar and cinnamon in the crock pot, destined to become apple butter. Yeah, my house smells good. Doesn't look so pretty though. Painting and cooking are productive in their own right, but they don't facilitate picked-up toys or put-away laundry.

Oh well. Such is my life.

As promised, the grilled meatloaf recipe

Someone expressed interest in the recipe from my last post, so here it is. If you try it, please let me know how you liked it. I'm really a fan, I think.

1 lb. Ground beef
1 lb. ground pork
1 Egg, beaten
1 Onion, finely chopped
1/2 c. Cracker crumbs
1/4 c. Ketchup
1 tsp. Prepared mustard
4 or 5 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
a dash of salt, a sprinkle of pepper

sauce
1/4 c. Ketchup
2 Tbs. Brown sugar
1 tsp. Dry mustard
1/4 tsp. Nutmeg*

1. Combine meat, egg, onion, cracker crumbs, 1/4 c. ketchup & prepared mustard in large bowl; mix well. Shape into loaf; place in lightly greased 10-inch metal baking pan.**

2. Combine 1/4 c. ketchup, 2 Tbs. brown sugar, dry mustard and nutmeg in small bowl; mix well.

3. Grill over hot coals for 15 minutes. Place double thickness of foil on grill. Remove meatloaf to foil. (We found that it got a little too black on the bottom, so next time we'll spread out the coals, or move the loaf to the other side of the grill for less-intense heat)

4. Grill for 10 minutes longer or until cooked through, basting with ketchup mixture.


*The nutmeg really does add a nice flavor, even though it seemed weird to me at first.

**Because I had a time crunch issue, I placed it first into a 9-inch square pyrex pan and microwavfed it for 10 minutes at 50%. It didn't cook the loaf, but it heated it through enough that it only needed 25 minutes on the grill. I moved it to a metal pie plate before sticking it on the grill

So much to post, but so little devotion

I'm in a slump here. Every day something happens that causes me to say to myself, "you should put that on the blog." But every day, I reply, "I'll do just that later tonight." But it pretty much never happens. But it stops here. I am now making a concerted effort to actually document the interesting stuff, instead of procrastinating. Procrastination is really only acceptable for yucky stuff like calling the dentist or paying bills or scooping the cat litter, not fun things like playing on the internet.

So here's a big catch-up post.

First off, we have a little example of Norm's insane obsession with old crap. A tricycle from my Grandma's barn. About 25 years ago, Grandma Bug decided she wanted a tricycle to use for exercise. So she got one. It was yellow and big and heavy and had a big white basket on the back. We kids loved it, but it was too hard for her to pedal up the hills on their road. Enter bright idea #2, the electric trike. It is red, powered by a motor on the front and a car battery mounted between the back wheels. We kids loved that trike, too-- nothing like pedaling down the road, and then pulling the power-assist lever on the hills. Zoom! I remember it like it was yesterday.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I saw a thread on Bikeforums about resurrecting an old trike. Suddenly visions of bicycle restoration pop into my head. A phone call, a flashlight, and a lot of dirt later, I came home with this:

The original yellow tricycle had been sold many years ago, but the red DeSoto was there, waiting for me. It needs a lot of work, but is in amazingly good shape for something played with by preteens and then stored in a barn for the last 20 years. If all goes according to plan, I'll remove the motor and put a big basket on the back.

I'd like to take a moment, here, to mention that Mr. Deplume never said a word. He helped me load it into the truck with only one little question, "why are we bringing this to our house?" And when I gave him my answer ("so I can fix it up and ride it, of course") he didn't even give me a funny look. He's a good egg, I tell ya.

Next post that should have been made last week:
I actually finished something! I've been working on this prayer shawl for months and months. I will never again use that pattern. It's too mindless and too tedious all at once. And it felt like the shawl refused to grow. But I persevered and got it done. This is my first object made from a recycled thrift store sweater. You can see the original sweater on the Ravelry page for this project.


And lastly, I made meatloaf on the grill this week. Well, Mr. Deplume was in charge of the actual grilling part (we like to keep our gender roles archaic, thankyouverymuch). I didn't take a picture of it, though, as meatloaf is ugly. But it tasted great. I started with a recipe on someone else's blog, but changed it considerably as I am incapable of following a recipe (or pattern, for that matter). It didn't really resemble the author's recipe at all when I was done with it. I remembered what I did differently, so if anyone wants my take on grilled meatloaf, let me know and I'll post it here for you.

So that's all I have for today, but promise to be back soon with more madcap adventures.

Baconalia

The Anticraft is an online craft magazine that usually not-at-all-subtly reminds me that I'm a grown up. It is dedicated to macabre and or sinister crafts (to use their own words). It's a knitting, crochet, sewing, and cooking magazine, but with a decidedly dark twist. I have not ever had the desire to make anything from it.

Until today.

I present to you The Anticraft's Beltane 2008 issues, dedicated entirely to bacon. There is bacon fudge, bacon gingerbread cookies, a knitted bacon scarf*, and even a bacon crown**. Here's a snippet from the editor, Zabet Stewart:

I was thinking that bacon was a salty, crispy wonder of the world. I was thinking that bacon was a little like Mata Hari, seductive and delicious at first glance but actually devious and dangerous. I was thinking, "Cholesterol, schmolesterol." I was also thinking, at least while standing in the bacon section of the local grocery anyway, "I may just need to become a vegetarian."

I couldn't agree with her sentiment more. Even that vegetarian part. But good or bad, bacon mania has gripped the nation and I love it. I'm still inspired to find the perfect bacon cookie, and it's good to know that thousands of young, edgy hipsters will be joining me in my quest for the perfect combo of porky and sweet. It warms the cockles of my domesticated, conservative heart.




*yarn knit to look like bacon, not using bacon as the "fiber". I'm having troubles with misplaced modifiers there

** actually a crown made of bacon. I guess for your favorite pork princess.

Bacon Cookies. (I wish I were kidding)

Who: me
What: Breakfast Cookies, from Workbasket magazine, Sept 1973
Where: my kitchen
When: this morning
Why: God only knows.

Being a fan of all things vintage, I bought a bunch of Workbasket Magazines from 1973, expecting granny square afghans and ugly sweaters on models with hair helmets and bad sunglasses. I found all that. But I also found that there were recipes. Lots of recipes. I would have skimmed past them if it weren't for the captions on the 2-inch-square photos. The first one I came upon was something about a zesty tomato and frankfurter sauce served over macaroni. I started reading them out loud to Mr. Deplume while he was driving us somewhere, and we had some good laughs.

Then I came upon this: "Why not have a cookie at breakfast time? Bacon, cereal and orange juice flavor these."

bacon? cereal? orange juice?

I looked at the recipe. It also has raisins. I immediately thought of the line from one of my favorite movies, Better Off Dead, "It's got raisins in it. You like raisins."

After Easter dinner, I showed these magazines to my family, all of whom also laughed. No wonder the 1970's were so screwed up: look what we were eating! In the course of that Easter afternoon, I came to realize that I must make the bacon cookies.

And I did.

The recipe is simple: mix flour, nut-like-cereal (think Grape Nuts), sugar and baking powder, then add butter, egg, orange juice concentrate, bacon and raisins. Mix. Bake. Enjoy.

And enjoy, I did not.

My three-year-old boy actually found them to be tasty. I'll pass them out to adventurous friends and family, and will share their reactions here, in case I'm just imagining that they are bad. The texture is actually pretty good. And the raisins aren't really even noticeable. But one thing is clear to me: orange juice and bacon should NOT co-mingle.

not. not. not.

See, even the cover model think they look like a bad idea. She's giving me the "look" and clutching that cardigan, planning to use it to protect her from the hickory smoked horror.



I have found out that there is another, modern, well-thought-out bacon cookie recipe out there, the bacon maple cookie, although the idea of chocolate chips and bacon sounds bad to me, too. But I'll probably try them someday, too. I'm still holding out hope, as I'm a true fan of bacon. It really is a wondrous meat-like substance.

Yum

I made pizza last night. And it rocked. Homemade pizza is so very much better than the crap from any of the pizza joints around here. This little guy had homemade sauce, mushrooms, onions, spinach, and sun dried tomatoes and basil from my very own garden. I have always used the pizza crust recipe from the Kitchen Aid mixer cookbook, but this time I tried a new one on the suggestion of a friend. It is very good, although I didn't add enough flour (ran out. oops). It was really sticky and hard to work with, but the texture was great once it was cooked.


I haven't been dong much knitting, as I've been working on the girl's Halloween costume. Making a Rapunzel wig is tedious at best. I have a little more "hair" to add to it still, and I need to finish the dress. My mama is making her an extra overskirt and shrug out of pink sparkly material. She's going to be the prettiest princess a t the ball, I tell ya!

Check me out, being so very domestic

I'm not really a stranger to domesticity. I rather enjoy it. But I took the summer off of baking, as I hate heating up the kitchen when the air conditioning is on. So now that it is fall, I've got the baking bug again.

A few weeks ago, I started a sourdough starter. I tended it and kept it safe, and it did what it was supposed to do: smell like sour socks and bubble when fed. Until I tried to make bread out of it. Today was my second failed attempt, and I think I'm ready to throw in the towel. I'm fairly handy with regular yeast breads, and I'm going to go back to what I know. I'll leave the sourdough to the experts. ;)

So at 2pm my need for fresh baked goods had as yet been unmet, and I also needed to come up with a plan for dinner. I remembered that a friend had given me her homemade tortilla recipe. So pulled it out (well, I looked it up on the computer; I never would have been able to find a paper recipe on command) and made a batch of flour tortillas. They are certainly not the roundest or prettiest tortillas ever, and I didn't add enough salt, so they don't taste perfect either, but all in all, not bad for a first attempt. They are good enough that I'll be serving them for dinner tonight.