Becca's Blog

Scone-athon.

Between Thursday night and Friday morning, I baked one batch of ginger shortbread (with fresh and candied ginger--none of that powdered stuff) and three varieties of scones. Most of them went to our friends in Jane's office, but I took some to work as well, and we have plenty of leftovers.

All the recipes--for the ginger shortbread and the cornmeal-cherry, maple-pecan, and cheese scones--are from the Cheese Board Collective cookbook. The Cheese Board is a Berkeley institution venerated among foodies. In addition to its amazing cheese counter, the Cheese Board bakes wonderful things, and this is mostly a baking book.

I actually don't go into the Cheese Board shop very often, because it's chaotic and crowded. I know better than to be standing between the typical Berkeleyite and the Explorateur they need. But the baked goods are really to die for, and they're a bit easier to get than the cheese without losing an arm.

They're purists, though, those Cheese Board collective members. Their recipe for sourdough starter takes *twelve days.* Being a dilettante, I have not undertaken the sourdough starter, so I haven't made a lot of the raised-dough recipes in the cookbook.

You need sourdough starter for something called Wolverines, which are little breads with apricots and pecans. I reviewed the recipe on Thursday, and considered whether I could go down to the shop and ask them to sell me a pound or so of their sourdough starter. They certainly have it to spare, and they might make a ton of money selling it. I think I will go inquire, but not until after the holiday.

Mashed potatoes are the food of the gods.

So is pie. I played hooky from work on Thursday and made pumpkin pie, and we roasted a wee turkey. And we have just enough leftovers.

This is a working weekend for me, and I'm likely to be doing 12-hour workdays next week; maybe by next Sunday I can show you some pictures of the finished carwash flaps scarf and my snail's progress on the baby blanket edge.

Sweets for the sweet.

This morning I hauled carcass out of bed to make these:

Chocolate-chocolate chunk muffins, in heart-shaped muffin cups. We each had one for breakfast, and they are damned rich. The recipe is in Dorie Greenspan's Baking book. Since they are so not on my diet, I'm taking about half the leftovers in to work, where I must haul my carcass five minutes ago.

Busy weekends.

I just finished making cranberry-cherry relish for Thursday; it's my usual contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. I'm also intrigued by a recipe for port-glazed pearl onions that I found this morning, while I was pawing through my stack of old food magazines and wishing the weekend weren't over.

I have some photos to show you. Every once in a while, I actually do finish something. 
I finished it a few weeks ago but I'm still bored with it. It's a Christmas present. I have to figure out how to wrap it with a yoga mat inside. Schmeh.

I didn't finish any other WIPs over the weekend; instead, I started two a teeny Aran top-down cardigan and a child-size two-end sock, at the Olema Inn knitting workshops.


As I mentioned before, Beth Brown-Reinsel taught both workshops, and she's a wonderful teacher. She's very patient and very flexible about adapting to what people want to learn, and her handouts are incredibly clear. I got some good practice at working from a chart, which I haven't been doing much of lately.
Olema is in west Marin, very close to the ocean and on the edge of Pt. Reyes. It's an incredibly beautiful setting, and the weather was picture-perfect. But some people were so obsessed with finishing the class project that they couldn't even stop for lunch.
If anything, I'm a more dedicated eater than knitter. This was my breakfast on Sunday morning at Lingonberry Farm. I even tried pickled herring--not a new favorite, but I highly recommend Swedish pancakes. It was a kind of funny synergy to be staying in a place with such a distinct Swedish cultural theme, and then to head off down the road to learn a Swedish knitting technique, which two-end/twined knitting is.

The innkeeper was a knitter too, and was very interested in the workshop. There were even alpacas at the farm, which I felt was somehow appropriate, but I didn't want to scare them by taking their picture.
This was the view from the breakfast room window.
Now I've got to plan which WIPs to take with me on our Thanksgiving road trip to see my parents. I'm hoping for snow in the Sierras this week, but not on Wednesday, when we'll be driving!

My desert island cookbook.

I've been thinking for awhile about doing a series of posts about my favorite cooking things , including what cookbook I'd take to a desert island (the island having a full complement of grocery stores and working kitchens, of course). It wouldn't be Joy of Cooking -- when my copy fell apart years ago I didn't bother to replace it, and it wouldn't be How to Cook a Wolf. Though that book was interesting I find the cult of MFK Fisher unbearable.

No, of my 50 or so cookbooks (I haven't counted, and I just gave away a bunch in the interest of decluttering), my current go-to guide is Moosewood Restaurant New Classics.

It's wide-ranging, covering solid basics as well as including intriguing new ideas, and usually when I go looking for a recipe to help me execute an idea, it's in there. (It could be that my ideas float up based on previous browsing sessions, but still.) And the techniques are sound and work in a home kitchen, unlike with some "Restaurant" cookbooks. You can tell that they've been thoroughly tested, whereas last weekend when I tried out a focaccia recipe from my new Mario Batali cookbook, Molto Italiano,  the proportions of flour to liquid were off.  I dig Mario, but damn, talk about cult of personality. The way the dude's face stares at you from the cover is a bit creepy, and the still life of his orange clogs on the back cover is a bit much as well. It's an intriguing cookbook nonetheless--has lots of recipes I'd like to try sometime, like when a diet is the farthest thing from my mind. There's a recipe for battered and fried celery in there--as well as Roman cheese-stuffed fried rice balls.

All of Moosewood's cookbooks are rather more down to earth, and the recent ones have shed some of the extreme earthy-crunchiness of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. (I don't have that one, but I do have a couple of others, as well as Mollie Katzen's Still Life With Menu. About 13 years ago that was a favorite but I don't pull it out so much anymore.)

But thanks to Moosewood we know we like a nice tofu scramble, and we also know how to make it. And a simple celery with blue cheese salad has become something of a staple (it's not deep fried, but it's not low-cal, either).

And Moosewood came through again yesterday: I was in the grocery store buying supplies for this weekend's houseguests, the 17-year-old niece and a friend. I was buying breakfast cereal and goggling at the price of granola (seven bucks for one bag--oy, but kind of stupid of me to stop at the local carriage-trade grocery store for cereal, huh?). And I realized that I probably had all the ingredients and could make some, provided I could find a recipe. Sure enough, the recipe was in Moosewood New Classics, and I have all the stuff. So sometime this afternoon or tomorrow, I will be making breakfast cereal from scratch.  I've never done this before, because I have much the same attitude toward this as I do toward spinning: Sure you can, but why? I'll let you know if it turns out to be the most delicious granola ever, but I really suspect the next batch will be Trader Joe's "Just the Clusters" maple pecan.

Next installment in this series: My desert island kitchen gadget.

Happy Santy.

That's me.  My outlook took a turn for the better along about last Friday, and I had a pretty good weekend.  If Typepad hadn't been experiencing some kind of intestinal distress, I would have posted about the foolishness of trying to learn a new knitting technique, with the resultant productivity loss, while gift-knitting on a deadline. And that the phrase "Continental purl" scans exactly like "horizontal bop." I'm pretty sure that's trochaic meter, and why the latter phrase floated into my consciousness, I have no idea.

We got the tree decorated late last week, and though it's small and leans a bit, it's perfect for us this year.

On Saturday I had coffee with a friend and her nine-month-old son, on Clement Street in San Francisco. The boy was calm, happy, and delightful. Any day that I get to kiss a baby goes down as a good day in my book. We met at Green Apple Books, and I found a book in the bargain bin that I really wanted to read, at a seriously bargain price. Score. We also went into Kamei, a big Chinese housewares/restaurant supply store that has what seems like everything. My friend and I both bought some useful stuff for cheap. Score again (yes, ignoring my own scruples about Chinese imports--it seemed kind of churlish on Clement St., and besides, I really needed an umbrella). I refrained from bringing my knitting, figuring I wouldn't have any time to work on it--but I stopped on my way out of town to give blood, and I forgot about the waiting time at the blood bank. That'll teach me to ever leave the house without a knitting project.

On Sunday I made these for a dinner party with some friends. They're cheese straws, which are basically butter and cheddar cheese held together with a bit of flour. Sort of like homemade Cheez-Its. So far this is the only holiday baking that I've managed, but I still turned the kitchen into chaos while doing it.

On Monday I got two gift scarves blocked, and Laurie is right: Steam blocking is the way to go. I was going to say "steam blocking is the shit," but in honor of the holidays decided to dial back the vulgarity. On Tuesday I got these wrapped, packed, and shipped off to their recipients along with the rest of the distance gifts, which was less of an ordeal than most people probably had to endure, but still bad.

On Wednesday I finished the last of my Christmas shopping, and yesterday I got it all wrapped and finished Jane's brioche-stitch hat, in time for her to take it on the Alaska trip (pictures and postmortem another day). And that is why I'm a happy Santy. Happy holidays to all of you.

I bet I haven't mentioned how much I love Thanksgiving.

I get to make fancy foods that nobody even wants to eat the rest of the year but are mandatory the fourth Thursday of November: This year it's my signature cranberry-cherry relish, sweet-potato pudding, and pecan tart.

I get to collaborate in the kitchen with my mom and watch TV with my dad, both happy things.

I get to make Christmas lists in earnest.

I get  four days in which work is totally off-limits, and sitting on my ass knitting is a high priority.

I get a lump in my throat when I get to say "Happy Thanksgiving" to people because it's just so warm and fuzzy.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Tonight, we eat turnips.

For three consecutive weeks we've gotten a bunch of turnips in our organic produce box, so there's no help for it; we've got to eat some. While all the dark leafy greens and root vegetables and dark orange squashes are undoubetdly good for our health, they've caused our intake of cured meats to go up as well. We need a little bacon or sausage to help the chard go down.

I found a recipe in Moosewood Restaurant New Classics that involves cutting turnips into matchsticks, tossing them with olive oil and herbs, and baking them. Oiled up and caramelized, most things taste pretty good--but we still need something we actually like to go with. Like maybe grilled steak.

I canceled the produce box subscription after our four-week trial, but honestly, it felt like a breakup. Thanks to the weekly newsletter we got with each box, we know the names of the workers who picked our lettuce, that the farm cat passed away recently, and that one of the happy hens surreptitiously brooded and hatched a flock of chicks. I almost couldn't do it.

Food nostalgia.

Due to an odd confluence of events, quinces have been on my mind lately, and rose geraniums too. My grandmother grew both, and made preserves and jelly from them. Both have very spicy perfumes, but as I remember my grandma's preserves, they mostly just tasted sweet.  I wonder if modern recipes with less sugar would taste different.

The author of The Book of Salt describes a dish of quinces ripening on a table, and that's what started my reminiscing about them.  I'd like to have a quince tree, I think, and definitely a fig tree. Yesterday's style supplement to the Times includes a recipe for apple crumble that includes quinces (and blackberries, oddly). I might make it. It also has a recipe for rose geranium cake, which I will definitely not make, despite the coincidence of having a stalk of rose geranium on my dining room table. 

Last week's delivery from Eatwell Farm included a bonus stalk of rose geranium. It's pungent--Jane said it smelled like disinfectant. I'm intrigued by flavoring sugar with the leaves, though.

We're into the second week of our trial membership in the Eatwell Farm CSA, and I'm not so sure we're going to stick with it. We're not great turnip, bok choy, and squash eaters, and that's what we're getting a lot of. And the bunch of lemon verbena is drying on the counter, but I know I'm never going to crush it for tea, much less use it.  As noble as the cause of supporting a small organic farm is, I think I'd end up with more stuff that we'll actually eat by just going to the farmer's market once a week--and still achieve the objective of purchasing locally grown produce.

Don't get me wrong--I love food.

Food should not be a religion, but it's culture, economics, politics--and thus endlessly interesting. It's really the elitism of boutiques of precious produce that pisses me off.

I've been thinking some lately about trying to eat as locally as possible--seeing last weekend that the fish at my local Albertson's came from Chile, Vietnam and Lake Victoria, Kenya, jarred (and nauseated) me. The relatively virtuous choice was wild-caught salmon from Alaska, but still nowhere near the 100-mile radius that environmentalists (the good ones) advocate.

I just subscribed to a service that delivers a box of (sort of)  locally grown organic produce. We'll see how that goes.