kitchenmage

Wordy Wednesday: Thoughts on a Failed Recipe...

Isn't that a lovely loaf of sweet bread?

I was experimenting one night and swapped a single ingredient around in a quick bread recipe that I use regularly with great success. It wasn't even a big switch, damned near the equivalent of changing beer brands in beer bread, but it was apparently the exact wrong thing.

An overwhelming yeasty one-note 'aroma' gave way to a crumb that was somehow both gummy and dry and a profoundly bitter taste. There was no yeast and nearly a cup of sugar in one loaf, and the gummy/dry thing is just baffling. I literally took one bite and threw the rest away.

A blogger friend saw the photo and said, "You know, some people would just post the recipe...I mean it looks good." I got another note moments later saying "JUST KIDDING! Please don't tell anyone I said that." so I am not naming names.  glares at @redacted

This got me thinking about the less deliberate recipe failures that hit print and what heck is the bar for publishing recipes (and other things) anyway and what happens when the inevitable screwups happen. And they will...

Wordless Wednesday: A Moment of #!*@ing Silence

My oven has decided that now, with money impossibly tight and the holiday cooking season closing fast, is a good time to die. The picture above is not it. That picture is what I am taunting my increasingly erratic beast range with. "Work or I'll replace you with this sexy thing!" does not seem to be working.

I have, however, developed a new technique for roasted chicken that involves heating the oven up to 350, letting the temperature fall to 190-270, reheating the oven to 350 and repeating. (All temperatures are +/-75 degrees. Seriously.) It takes about three...or maybe it was four hours and the chicken was remarkably moist yet cooked through. How that happened I have no idea.

Guess that's where the magic comes is.

I am biting back everything I want to say about the range in honor of Wordless Wednesday (and be glad it's not Swearing Saturday because holy #!*@balls, Batman would I ever be going for it) and simply quietly dream of something like that pretty thing up there .

Wordless Wednesday: Containing the Flour Tornado

I am not sure which wise person told me this first, but this is the best tip I got with my Kitchen Aid mixer most of two decades ago

Drape a towel over your mixer before turning it on and you will not have a flour covered kitchen.

Simple but so incredibly helpful, to both me and the help.

Wordless Wednesday: Garden Moments

Spotted flitting between the anise hyssop and this aptly named butterfly bush in the herb garden one August day, this beauty is a Red Admirable (or Red Admiral if you must be modern). They are common as the nettles upon which they nectar but I still love those marbled-looking underwings and bright blue spots.

According to Robert Pyle's book, The Butterflies of Cascadia, they also like rotting apples, which means it is probably good that the apple tree has a guardian.

One more bit of pretty after the jump...

Wordy Wednesday: Corn and the White House Garden

It's been a sadly drizzly spring here and I'm dreaming of summer. Lare summer. Corn and tomatoes and barbeques by the pond.                    sigh

A wee bit closer to reality, here's a thing to make you think. If the White House garden was planted in crops at the same percentages as taxpayers subsidize them, the single largest crop would be corn, at about 35%. Add in wheat (20%), soy (15%), and cotton (20%) and 90% of the garden is planted. Beyond that, less than 1% is in the sort of stuff most people plant in their gardens: lettuce, peppers, squash, and the thousand other bits of dinner that tastes best fresh from the garden.

This is all a bit esoteric to hold in your head so Kitchen Gardeners International made this sweet little graphic of "America's Subsidy Garden" that shows you what it would look like.

If the weather ever clears up, the first thing I am planting is tomatoes. Little tiny pop in my mouth heirloom tomatoes. The kind we eat like candy in August.

What's in your garden? Your dreams?

Wordless Wednesday: Tweaking My English Muffins

I started with this recipe: English muffins and crumpets: an (almost) shared recipe and while it's closer to what I want, it's still not quite there.

Speaking of things that are not there...can we talk about me for a nanosecond? I have been ill lately, which is why I have been not here. (All I really want to say is that if anyone ever says to you, "quick choose a modifier for 'nausea and vomiting'..." you should NOT choose "intractable"...) This seems to be an ongoing thing (oh joy) so I have to figure out what the hell the food writer who doesn't eat much writes about (since we know I am not writing about myself). I am accepting input on this...

One of the very few things I can eat on my not so good days is English Muffins, hence the recipe tweaking. The next batch will be get a little more water and be cooked in rings. Photos soon. I hope.

Wordless Wednesday: Valentine's Day Cinnamon Roll

Happy Valentine's Day! Hope you are either spending it with someone you love or finding a creative way to ignore it until the redPinkWhiteHeartsAndFlowers craziness is over. (This bread is a variant of Farmgirl's Oatmeal Toasting Bread, slightly corrupted, enriched with milk, eggs, brown sugar and spices.)

Wordless Wednesday: Beet Geodes

The first step in drying beets is cleaning and peeling to reveal the beauty beneath.

Wordless Wednesday: Red, err...Magenta Velvet Cake Batter

I am experimenting with Red Velvet Cake this week and fell in love with this color. So much so I hated to bake it. More soon...

Wordless Wednesday: Aprons That Make Me Smile

 

This apron remind me of my grandmother, Mimi, who favored aprons with a bit of panache, her own mix of cheek and frills. As a child, this meant fun dressup worthy aprons when I went to her house to cook, which I did quite often, She would also have loved this black hostess number. Because, seriously, black hostess aprons . How Mad Men is that?

Check out all of tarazara's Vintage Inspired Aprons on etsy.

Dear FTC: re: blogger disclosure  ~  Tara is a friend of mine, but nothing of value has changed hands in relationship to this post. She has, however, given me many things of value over the years: advice, well-placed humor, support, an occasional virtual smack upside the head, and mostly friendship...but since it has pretty much all taken place online, I assume the NSA already knows all about that.