kitchen adventures

Last week I gathered various Amazon gift cards I had collected over past months and applied them to my order of a nice chef’s knife and a brand new hardcover book (I never do that, even with gift money). The knife is the sharpest I have ever used (fingers, beware) and it makes chopping veggies much less of a hassle and in fact, less of a risk—dull knives cause more accidents. The book is this one by baker Peter Reinhart. His previous bread cookbook was a huge hit, but I don’t have it, and I was encouraged to get this new one on account of reviewer comments such as “this is Reinhart lite” and that it was probably the most thoroughly tested cookbook ever. I like thoroughly tested recipes. That’s why I suffer from Cook’s Illustrated dependency. Anyway, I do have some bread baking experience but it’s not been altogether successful, and I’m no scientist in the kitchen. I don’t need pages of explanation about different bacterial strains in sourdough before making it confidently. I just want straightforward directions about how to make good, crusty bread. In the past I’ve come close, but not close enough to justify the extra planning involved in making “slow” bread rather than a quick sandwich loaf, and my results were kind of sporadic.

Once I can get some pineapple juice I will start a seed culture so that I can begin experimenting with the sourdough recipes in the book. For now I’ll concentrate on the simple instant yeast recipes, like the French bread. I have a stand mixer that handled the double batch for me, but the texture of the dough made it a dream to finish kneading (the machine or your hands knead it for 2 minutes, then you knead by hand for another minute). I didn’t have to add any extra flour and it was perfectly smooth and tacky, so I’m pretty sure this would be quite easy to knead entirely by hand. Since the recipe makes two large loaves, I went ahead and divided it into two bowls: one I will bake tomorrow after a long night in the fridge, and the other will sit for about 4 days until I want to bake again. Reinhart says the quality of the dough begins to deteriorate after that point, but it can be kept in the fridge up to a week. There were also directions for freezing the dough! I love the flexibility. I honestly had no idea yeasted dough could sit for so long without slowly overgrowing and taking over the fridge.

We’ll see how this effort at artisan breadmaking turns out. I hope that the mediocre rye bread I had to buy in a pinch last week is the last loaf of bread I purchase for a long time.

Sourdough Biscotti

I’ve started making biscotti. It’s become one of our favorites. Rosy our dog thinks they’re worth drooling over. This recipe uses Hermann starter. If you don’t have any sourdough starter you can make the yeast version of it posted after this recipe.

Sourdough Biscotti
1/2 cup Hermann starter (similar to Amish starter w/less sugar)
2 TBSP butter, melted
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
Mix everything together.
Add in dry ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Add desired flavorings in any combination you prefer: almonds, pecans, raisins, mini chocolate chips etc. (I usually add nuts and raisins or else nuts and chocolate chips, 1/4-1/2 cup of each)

Mix wet ingredients first then add in flour, baking powder and flavorings. Pour onto a greased cookie sheet. Make two logs about 3 inches by 9 inches. Dough will be sticky and will try to spread. I use a knife to shape it. It will puff up when baked. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes. I bake mine on the second shelf since the bottom tends to burn on a lower shelf. The outside should be evenly brown.
Cool 20 minutes.
When cool, cut into 1/2 inch slices. Inside should be soft but not raw. Put sliced sides down. Watch closely. Bake again at 300 degrees for 5-7 minutes until crisp. Turn and bake other side. If they are not dry and hard, leave in the oven longer turned off or turned way down. Serve plain or cover tops with icing.

Lemon Icing
Use real lemon juice thickened with confectioners sugar.

Chocolate icing:
Melt in microwave :
1/2 square bakers chocolate
1 1/2 tsp butter
Stir in
1 TBSP milk,
6 TBSP confectioners sugar or mix in double boiler.

Sourdough purists would disapprove, but you can make a starter with yeast in a pinch. You’ll need to make it a few days before using it. If it’s the consistency of gravy and bubbly all the way through, you can use it sooner.

Shortcut Hermann Starter
In a medium sized glass or ceramic bowl, mix together:
2 TBSP warm water (not too hot)
1 1/2 tsps yeast in water
When dissolved, add:
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar (the Amish version uses 1/2 cup sugar)
1/2 cup flour

Stir with a wooden spoon. Don’t worry about lumps. They’ll dissolve. Cover with cheesecloth or a towel and keep at room temperature.

If you want to keep feeding it, you’ll need to make some extra to feed. When I made this before, mine didn’t keep longer than a couple weeks then went bad. The store bought yeast has to convert to the wild yeast in order to keep reproducing. If you want to try to catch some wild yeast, check it every day and stir daily. If it smells OK and has bubbles all the way through, it’s fine. You can refrigerate it after it’s working well or freeze it for later use. It needs to be fed every three days at room temp or once a week in the fridge. Measure out the starter and add 1 part starter, 1 part milk, and 1 part flour and half as much sugar.

the dream home of your nightmares

Dear Ladies,

My sister and I have entered to win the 2010 HGTV dream home, but we’re not best pleased with the decor they’re offering us this year. You can see the full panoply of pictures on their website, linked above, but I would like to register some specific grievances. First of all, the food choices seem a little odd.

I am not at all sure that we can eat our way through that many institutional jars of hominy.

Then there is this sort of stick figure in the yard, caught apparently, like a deer in the headlights — a stick deer, as it were — doing, apparently, what two dimensional figures do when they think no one is looking. (Something that involves a giant rock.)

Then we have this interesting choice of osseus matter — I would say the jawbones of several asses, arranged in a sort of ’skeletal view of emergent bison doing interlocking deep knee bends’ impression.

Tear your eyes away from it ladies, for we have another piece of art below which shall challenge us further to do some real soul searching for some sort of answer — and then, flee to another room.

(I always find it so impossible to browse the internet when being eerily ogled by the giant head of a painted warrior.)

But I think the most anomalous thing in the 2010 dreamhome is depicted below: set among lamps, in a sort of breviary of houseplants. (I looked up the word ‘breviary’ and it didn’t mean what I thought it didn’t: but I’m so frightened out of my wits at the moment that nothing more suitable is coming to mind). It looks like a sacred cakeplate: a sort of teleportation device for outer cake:

I enter to win the dream home annually, and always count on being surprised by winning (though I actually avoid this website now because I find it so addictive — my sister alerted me that the dream home was going soon.) They will be ambushing (ha. ha. not so funny, considering that painting in the computer room) the winner mid March: Enter for your chance to win a stick figure squatting mysteriously over a rock, a truly awe inspiring engorged head of man, some bones of animals preserved in various forms of prehistoric yoga, an hagiographical dessert display, and forty odd cans of hominy.

good days

It is probably natural to assume that a fairy godmother has visited me and waved her magic wand and made all my struggles regarding keeping up with the housework disappear — at least, it is natural for me to expect that any day now she will show up, tapping on my window with her magic wand to get my attention, freezing her poor fairy wings to a crisp and having to cling to the iron railing of the second story window so that she won’t fall down with frozen wings. (But perhaps the rest of you do not actually keep an eye on the windows for such things?)

In any case, there has been no occasion of opening the window and letting such a fantastic visitor tumble in; so all assumptions that there has — I say this gently: it is so kind of anyone to entertain high hopes for me — would be misplaced.

I generally have a day where I can scarcely even sustain the effort to concentrate after a day where I have been *very good*.  I was *very good* yesterday: I read for several hours, washed dishes for at least another several, and did laundry, and this on top of making myself presentable for the duration.  In consequence of which I could hardly drag myself out of bed this morning, have only the concrete reading of a Psalm to show for the past hours, and a pathetically small little mountain of crumpled kleenex as a byproduct of going about to establish my own housewifely righteousness.

The Bible tells us to redeem the time because the days are evil.  Wasted days are one of the biggest evils that I feel can never be redeemed; and so today seemed like a very evil day indeed.  But as I was altering the landscape with my kleenex mountain, poring over the woes of the world, and especially of my loved ones, and some of my own woes, and calling this ‘prayer’, I remembered some things I read yesterday, and knew what they meant better today than I did then.  Indeed, it seemed like the meaning of the words I read then, was really only a meaning that you understand not with your head when you hear it, but with your heart when you remember it.  And the meaning was simply my Saviour Himself, coming into those words and making them mean, in the middle of all the wasted hours, Him.

So it strikes me that all days really are, anyway, are lengths of time for Him to come into: and that all time is redeemed where He is.

And that I would rather look up and find that He has come in and redeemed my time any day, than to look up and find a frozen fairy knocking on the window with her magic wand, clinging perilously to the iron rail with her shimmery cold toes, promising to turn me into Super-Redeeming-the-Time-Woman, begging to be let in.

(Not that I wouldn’t make her a cup of tea, of course, and discuss the weather: but I do prefer more human company.)

At the Door

I read this poem last week and thought it was good food for thought and reflection.  Especially since we are in the middle of the school year and all cooped up together in the house during the winter cold.  It can be tempting to try and steal a precious moment alone.  I never thought of this in the context of our relationship with our Heavenly Father before.  It quickly changed my perspective.

At the Door

by Eugene Field

 

I thought myself indeed secure,

So fast the door, so firm the lock;

But, lo! he toddling comes to lure

My parent ear with timorous knock.

 

My heart were stone could it withstand

The sweetness of my baby’s plea,—-

That timorous baby knocking and

“Please let me in,–it’s only me.”

 

I threw aside the unfinished book,

Regardless of its’ tempting charms,

And opening wide the door, I took

My laughing darling in my arms.

 

Who knows but in Eternity,

I, like a truant child, shall wait,

The glories of a life to be,

Beyond the Heavenly Father’s gate.

 

And will that Heavenly Father heed

The truant’s supplicating cry,

As at the outer door I plead,

” ‘Tis I, O Father! only I?”

Of course, I don’t think for a moment that God would linger to admit His own children into His presence.  But, it does put into perspective how loving and kind our Heavenly Father is always to us.  How can we then ignore the pleads of a child who wishes to be in the presence of his earthly parents?

For Laura!

 Happy Birthday Laura!

 

(Just read this at the Puritan Board)

Sugar substitutes?

I need help and thought I would come to the field of experts. You all seem to know so much more than I and are health-conscious. I am looking for alternatives to using processed white sugar in everyday cooking and baking. I am also doing research about growing Stevia. Can anyone help me?

Hind’s Feet in High Places!

Habbakuk 3:17 Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: 3:18 Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. 3:19 The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places.

 

If you are weary, lonely or  heavy laden , perhaps in pain physically or emotionally, then you will take comfort from these beautiful words written by the prophet Habbakuk, inspired by the Holy Spirit. How often do we doubt. We think things look hopeless. We feel that our lives are shrivelled up and fruitless. We cannot see a way of escape. But God….

  

Thinking especially of Heidi today and those who suffer in one way or another. May we all take strength in the God of our Salvation and look to him with joy even in adversity.

Happiness is a Warm Kitten

OK, I know it’s supposed to be a warm puppy, but I have a new kitten! I wish I had a digital camera to show her off. Actually she’s a very common looking black tabby kitty. We got her a couple of weeks before Christmas and I named her Matilda. She has a big M marking between her ears right on her forehead so she needed a name that started with an M. Rosy, our dog has shown that she has amazingly patient nature since this feisty little kitten came into our home. Matilada comes charging out of another room towards poor Rosy who will suddenly jump up, trying her best to avoid her. Rosy will even give up her warm place by the stove when Matilda moves in.

Matilda’s pregnant mother was dumped at my friend Becky’s house last summer. Becky has a big heart and didn’t want to take her to the pound so she started feeding her and all the kittens that followed. Matilda was the runt of the litter. She’s only half grown but Becky thinks that she may be full grown and said she’s older than she looks. She’s a slow eater so didn’t do very well competing for her food. While all the other kittens were eating food Becky poured out for them, Matilda stayed with us and rubbed against our ankles. I picked her up and she never stopped purring. I wondered what Bill would say about me bringing home a new kitten.

Thankfully, he didn’t say anything about taking her back to Becky’s. My idea was that she would be a barn cat. Becky told me that her mother taught them all to be good mousers. We kept her in our heated basement because it was so cold that night even though she’d been kept outdoors all her life. But then she didn’t have her other kittens to curl up with and she was all alone. We fixed her a bed in a box near the fire. We’ve been invaded by flying squirrels that have been running around the outside of our house at night. Bill was closing up all the places he could find where they might get in. Two even got in the house one night and we had to chase them out an open window with a broom. The kitty impressed us one night by killing one that got into the basement. It was half as big as she is. Now she’s moved in as part of the family. I think that she and Rosy might just end up being good friends.

updates and changes

A swift note that we now have an EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION button below the search function!  The Blog has been updated!  The furniture has been rearranged!  I hope you all like the new look (which is basically composed of the email subscription button).  This is thanks to the thoughtfulness of Lauren who brought things to my attention that I had not with any real clarity perceived before — such as the meaning of the word ‘widget’.  It took me only three days to make sense of the simple request.  Lauren’s faith in me is heartwarming and almost brings me to tears (I didn’t fail you, dear friend!), but I would advise anyone who wishes to say something intelligent in future to contact Laura.

My internet service was cut off, my husband has been ill, I have been ‘considerably well in body but slightly rumpled in spirit’, last weekend family descended, and today we have guests from out of town, but I hope that in short reprieve granted to me in some weekday following, I will catch up here and elsewhere on the blogosphere.