Baking Projects

 Q. How do you know when you've watched too much of The Great British Baking Show?

A. You decide, on a lark, to make an 8 stranded loaf.  Also you start saying "on a lark" unironically.

It didn't quite come out like it was supposed to...shall we say.

For one thing, it was much too large!  Even after pulling off the messy ends and shaping them into...an interesting shape, it was much too large.

My dad, whose glasses hadn't come in yet, thought it was a turkey.

And the side loaf was, well...

 

an eyeful.

Klenda Laughing at my Loaves Whilst Making Leaf Cookies

Leaf Cookies

You can start out with any sugar cookie recipe you like.  We like this one, but we like to add a touch of maple flavor.

We colored the whole dough yellow, with a bit of brown since otherwise the lemony yellow didn't seem very autumnal.

Then we broke off a quarter of the dough into a bag and added some orange, broke off a third, colored the rest with red, than bagged half and colored the remainder a darker red.

 

We chilled the dough for a couple of hours, but since they were all in quart sized bags and flattened for fast chilling, we probably only needed an hour.

At any rate, we put random chunks of each color together on the board, then squished them together a bit before rolling them out.  I've seen it done without squishing and I thought a bit of swirling would make the leaves look more natural.

 

 

One of the surprise benefits was that the leaves looked different on each side!

We looked at each leaf and put our favorite side up.

These two are the same cookie.

They all ended up being super pretty!

Here they are about to go into the oven.

 

 

And here is the finished leaf pile!

Organization and Pie (Amazing Things to do With Spices)

With all the recent busyness, a lot of regular housekeeping (and blogkeeping) had fallen by the wayside.

My cabinets, in particular were driving me crazy!  I like to get spices in bulk from Penzey's, but could never figure out how to manage all the little bags...

Klenda devised this ingenious system of yarn and clips, and I can't even tell you how happy it makes me!

I can find everything, and nothing spills!  It even made me want to organize my spice rack with all the bottles!

 To celebrate, we made this fancy and delicious apple pie!

You roll a regular crust up with cinnamon, then cut it into spirals to form a super fancy crust.

Did I mention it's made with caramel and Irish cream?

It was beautiful and amazingly delicious!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Sorry, I've been off Ye Olde Blog for a bit.  I've been busy both having fun and putting out fires.
Which reminds me, I have a ton of things to blog about!

 

I'll get to everything eventually.  Probably.

Right now, it's St. Patrick's Day!!!!   I'm cooking 20 lbs of corned beef, 3 large cabbages and 10-15 lbs of potatoes. Klenda just finished making a double batch of Irish cream flavored Oreo truffles for dessert. Here's a post on why this day is special to us.

We are feeding the 16 gentleman our parish is currently housing for Safe Haven, as well as another 10 or so here at home.  Yes, I realize that's a lot of meat for 26 people, but I'd love for everyone to have as much delicious corned beef as they want to eat!

This year I'm trying the enormous pressure cooker my mom gave me.  If it works, it'll be by far the easiest way we've ever done this.  It's just the "If" that worries me!

In the meantime,  let's enjoy a discussion of the Trinity with St. Patrick's Bad Analogies!

And, of course, the Lorica, St. Patrick's Breastplate:

Allsorts

 I've always liked licorice allsorts, but it took me a while to realize that they were called that because they were "all sorts" of licorice.

As we finish our summer, we've been doing "allsorts" of things!

We made some really delicious ice cream.  I guess it was actually frozen yogurt, but it was lemon and cherry flavored with mini chocolate chips.

Mmmmmmm.  Maybe it was many chocolate chips!

We also have been making popsicles.  Our current favorite is nutella pops!  It's just nutella mixed with cool whip and milk and frozen, but it tastes exactly like it sounds!!

Continuing the yummy treats theme, Klenda whipped up two fabulous chocolate souffles for the feast of the Assumption!  They were also exactly as delicious as that sounds!

We also did a big water balloon fight (which I wish I had thought to get in pictures).

 We've been doing a lot of bird watching.  This is the time of year when lots of juvenile birds are out and about, and they are delightful and hilarious to watch!

We had a pair of juvenile cardinals,  some young grackles, and about three dozen sparrows mobbing our feeder.  A jay swooped in and everyone scattered except a juvenile sparrow who hopped at the jay and startled him off!

The picture is a red tailed hawk who hung out outside our dining room window.

The most fun has been the five hummingbirds at our feeders.  These tiny birds are very territorial, and one female is convinced she owns all three feeders.  She chases and chases, and the others swoop in to steal a sip while she is off chasing someone else!

I've been getting ready for my Chemistry class!

We've been doing a bit of redecorating.

Oob and Choclo fell in love with this fuzzy rug, and when asked where we should put it, they wanted it in the basement to lie on while they read comic books...

Mostly we've been working on giving the living room a steampunk theme.

We're not done yet (more pictures later) but it's coming along!

Guest Blog by Choclo: The Master Chef!

Yum-yum-yum! Your master chef...



is here! (calming down) Isn't that great!??
 
And I (the master chef) am going to cook...







 garlic!!!!!    Isn't that great!!!!???     
                                             That,s me. Choclo ----)-

     

 

 

 And that's my first customer,  OOB!!!                                                 

Will he like the garlic?  

YES!!!

 (and i love u very much!)

Domestic Blitz

The past few days have been a little crazy.

The Scouts are doing their chicken BBQ next weekend, so I am making about 300 Scouts Honor Rolls.  I have the fourth batch (out of five) rising as I type.




On Saturday, I spent most of the day in the kitchen: chocolate muffins, 8 pints of cranberry orange sauce, candied orange peel, baked pumpkin, two pies, and five loaves of pumpkin bread.  We had corn dogs for dinner (an emergency meal from the freezer)!

But the baking frenzy continued Monday with bread and cookies, and another pumpkin in the oven (not a metaphor).


I think there is something about fall that fires up my inner baker (and canner).  I've done two batches of pear butter, one pear syrup, and an apple butter so far, and I haven't even started the jams yet.

And then Monday we did 14 loads of laundry.  Thankfully, this was NOT due to a stomach bug!

Mondays and Fridays are our regular laundry days, but I thought we could squeeze in changing sheets.  Usually I schedule that on a different day, but I figured it would be fine, just 5 loads instead of our usual 3.  I had forgotten that our heavier winter clothing pushes us to 4 loads. And that I needed to help kids with closet cleaning.

Then, when the sheets were off the beds, I started to wonder how often we were supposed to wash the allergy covers.  The internet consensus is: twice a year, spring and fall.  But if we were doing the allergy covers, we should probably do the blankets to prevent cross contamination.

Taking Microbiology has made my life harder in some ways, but it really has helped with managing the dust allergies around here!

Each kid, when they were born, was given (by some very dear friends) a wonderful furry (twin sized) blanket which they all still use and love.  The label said it would last forever as long as you didn't use heat on them.  This appears to be true, but it means they all need to be washed in the morning so that they can air dry during the day...



It was one of those projects that looks like it will fit into your schedule.

I'm so grateful we have two sets of laundry machines!  And a Kitchen Aid!

And I'm going to sit down now!

Ultimate Autumn Dinner

 We had somehow acquired a basket full of unusual small squashes.

I think it happened because I couldn't resist small children pestering me for squash at the grocery store!

But then, I wasn't sure what to do with them all.

I ended up slicing them all into eighths and oven roasting them with butter, sausage and a touch of brown sugar.

Then everyone got a slice of each squash with a side of sauteed apples.  Squashalicious!

Everyone looks serious here because they are trying to determine which squashes they like best.

The winners were Buttercup, Sweet Dumpling, and Butternut, with a few extra votes for White Acorn.

Now we just need to try the big squashes!

In Other News

The Emperor and I went out to visit Mom's grave and see her new headstone.  We had a very nice time- I suppose we were gone for an hour, and when we got home the house smelled...good.

Choclo and Oob had decided they were hungry and had fixed themselves a snack.  Mmmmmmmm.  What could be better than buttered roasted garlic? 

Between the two of them, they ate 28 cloves (according to them, but my bag of garlic is nearly empty).

So, yes, the house did smell like an Italian restaurant. Choclo and Oob, on the other hand, smell like small kids who have each eaten over a dozen cloves of garlic. 

On the bright side, this really knocked out the cold.  On the dimmer side, it also knocks out anyone within 10 feet.

Indian Feast!

 One thing I really enjoy is cooking, especially cooking Indian food..  Another thing which I enjoy even more than cooking is friends.

So it's not really surprising that, for my birthday, I cooked a big Indian feast for my friends.  We made dinner for 18, which is about right for the number of dishes I wanted to make.

 Did I remember to take pictures? No.  These are pictures of the leftovers.  I don't have any leftover friends (still friends) so I don't have any pictures of them.

The Most Fun Thing about this was Klenda asking if I could teach her to cook Indian food!

The second most fun was when I decided I'd better get my apron on and Klenda answered,


" That's a good idea.  We need the extra power of Savage Apron Mode!"

What did I do before I had kids to point these things out?

Anyway, between the two of us, in  2 1/2 hours we made:
naan
coconut curry chicken
lamb rogan josh
spiced spinach with onions
turmeric and coriander cauliflower
lentils with spinach
saffron rice with coconut milk
Indian "hanburger" kabobs
and two kinds of pappadum.

Savage Apron Power!

 Caveat:  I posted links to give an idea of the recipes.  My actual recipes are from Madhur Jaffrey's excellent Indian Cooking.or her Quick and Easy Indian Cooking

Ducky Party

 That's what Choclo called it when we decided to make lemon sugar cut out cookies.

His favorite cutter was this cute little ducky, and we did end up with lots of ducky cookies.

But, really, we have a lot of cookie cutters!

This round of baking was inspired by the gift (from the redoubtable Bill) of a new batch of cutters. 


This batch contained a Moose and Squirrel, and really, who can resist that?

 Not us!

I didn't manage to get a picture of the moose, but can you find the squirrel?

Klenda frosted the finished cookies with lemon frosting. 

Lovely and tasty!

And gone before I thought to get a picture...

Squashed!

While apple picking, we also picked up pumpkins, some to carve and some to eat, but all quite decorative.

I love things that are beautiful and useful!

This year we got some old favorites:  banana squash (sweet and good for pies, bread, and soup), a blue hubbard (fantastic for soup).

We also tried a few new experiments: the brownish one to the right is a Fairy Tale Pumpkin which is supposedly so good that you can slice it thin and eat it raw.  We'll see if that is just a legend...

The orange and green one under the wagon is a Cinderella Pumpkin.  It is French,  sweet and custardy when cooked, and supposedly the very best pie pumpkin.

We shall see!

The flat white one is a White Boer, a South African Pumpkin that is supposed to be tasty and firm - soup and stew rather than pie.

And, of course, everyone had to pick out a warty gourd.  I put a few more smaller edible squashes in there: carnivals, butternut, acorn, and spaghetti.

Feasts

We've celebrated a few feast days in August.

St. Dominic was August 8th, and we made white cupcakes with chocolate "cappas"  in honor of the Dominican habit. 

Although, admittedly, I've never seen a friar with sprinkles!

 August 15th was the Assumption.  I wore my Assumption shawl to Mass!

It was a gift from beloved friends who visited us from Spain when Mxyl was a baby.  The shawl is embroidered silk with elegant long tassels and is really a beautiful work of art!

Every Feast of the Assumption I wear it to Mass and pray for my friends, Tia and Tio.



Also for this feast, Klenda made an angel food cake and I made blue, raspberry flavored whipped cream.

We garnished it with fresh raspberries - yum!!