kitchenmage

Sleepover Steel-cut Oats Recipe

It has been quite the winter around here, what with the cookbook coming out, my broken arm, and snowpocalypse! - and that was all last year! 2009 started with floods that shut down my state, followed by storms that washed out roads and took down 60 foot cedars in the valley. The usual distractions of the Internet are filled with bad news: economic meltdown, record unemployment, all those gazillions of dollars being thrown at the banking industry while a farmer in the next valley faces a growing number of farmers around here who are packing it in. (And what does it say that searching for that linked string above, including 'gazillion' gets almost 3000 hits? Nothing good, I'm sure.)

Tough times all around.

Apple Puffcake recipe

Lazy Sunday mornings. Light peeking in the window spills over the bed where those who resist the dawn snuggle in for just another minute or two. No agenda beyond a leisurely morning of tea, catching up on my friends on the tubes of the Internet, maybe a crossword puzzle...

Um, yeah. I remember those days.

food porn: pancakes (in very late beta)

This is about half an inch from perfect. And that bite right there, the one with the banana and the chocolate chip and the coconut - that bite rocks.

food porn: testing pancakes

Pancakes under development. Not exactly what I want, but tasty nonetheless.

I, sadly, have to eat my not-quite-it experiments. Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

food porn: Breakfast with a side of editing

Over the last few weeks, I have had more than my fair share of extravagant food for one: More pounds of asparagus than I care to admit have passed through my kitchen as I chopped and cooked, mixed and measured, tweaked and twiddled, before finally settling on a recipe, only to discard it the next day. I have a shelf full of goodies that I bought for the sole purpose of cooking an entire recipe to take 3-4 bites (and, when I couldn't freeze it, throw it away before I ate it all), before repeating it the net day - the food waste around here lately is appalling! Tomorrow's agenda includes baking a chocolate cake, not because I have a party this weekend, oh, no, this is going to sit here and taunt me for however long it takes me to eat it...one teensy little slice at a time.

But other days, days like today, I spend the entire day with my head down over a computer, only to look up as the sun drops behind the hill wondering how it got to be dusk. Days when my 'break' from the computer, such as it is, involves a stack of paper covered with red squiggles. Days when, if I am smart, I start with something that will keep me going all day.

Something like this: simple, old-fashioned oatmeal, cooked with 1/4 cup of apple cider and a sprinkle of cinnamon in the cooking water. I put it in a beautiful blue bowl that fits in the curve of my hand (50 cents at Goodwill!), top it with a drizzle of manuka honey and I have food so comfortable it darned near hugs me.