House on Hillsboro

Foundation, Part Second to Last

  

The building crew has only been out a few days in the past couple of weeks because of rain. When working with dirt you not only miss the rainy day but the day after, too, because everything needs to dry out a bit. Just about the time I start to get antsy, my Dad calls and says to relax and let things fall as they may and like magic I feel instantly at ease again.  He is right.  I so don't want to rush this and I surely don't want the builders to rush! 

Here is what has went down since the last foundation update (that I know of):

• The plumber came.  I can't really tell you what he did exactly but it took him an entire day and left pipe sticking up anywhere water will be needed.  I hope I didn't confuse you with my techincal jargon.
• The two Great Room in floor outlets were installed along with some other electrical stuff.
• The site and foundation was treated for termites.
• The exposed areas of the house and garage was readied for CONCRETE with visqueen and rebar and mesh.

 

In this photo, you can see the floor outlets and fireplace pit.  Concrete will fill this space reinforcing the area for the super heavy fireplace to come.

 

Here you see the back porch that will end at the cinder blocks and breezeway and garage -with posts! 

So tomorrow...concrete.  CONCRETE!  We will finish the foundation!  The day I have been waiting for! 

To celebrate I made Pioneer Woman's Yogurt Marmalade cake but substituted the orange marmalade for Porter House's Lemon-Ginger Marmalade and settled in on the couch with a healthy piece just as Idol was starting and nearly died of happiness. 

BIG DAY TOMORROW!

The Food You Crave.

The Cornmeal-Crusted Roasted Ratatouille Tart was next up here in my test kitchen and to be honest, after all that bragging, I half expected the next several recipes to be total disasters.  Plus, I didn't have the nine-inch tart pan it calls for (I used a nine-inch spring form) or a food processor (I made the crust by hand) so my doubts were mounting. 

Silly me.

Perfection. Unforgettable.  I shall make it for everyone I know and stare at them while they eat it and say, "I know, right?  RIGHT!"  Yeah, from now on, I am referring to this cookbook as my 'Book of Potions'.  It's magic.  I'm spellbound.

*The recipe version I linked to doesn't specify how thinly to slice the vegetables but according to the book - an 1/8 inch.

*It also calls for 1 zucchini equal to a 1/2 pound.  Unless your zucchini is huge, it takes two.

*While not difficult, the tart is fairly time consuming (and worth it!) so start early.

*I nearly doubled the salt & pepper because I felt like I lost so much on the pan. 

*Be conservative when brushing the veges with the olive oil so as to cover them all.

*The spring form pan worked perfectly.

Chocolate Cherry Almond Biscotti

I have never been a calorie counter.  Never.  Never.  Never.  But I only fully enjoy food that is good for me.  I also like my food to taste really, really good (quirky me).  Nobody combines these two better than Ellie Krieger.  You may know her through her Food Network Show Healthy Appetite but she is also a registered dietitian with a master's degree from Columbia University.

I loved her FoodTV recipes but they trickled out slow as molasses and I'm... hungry.  BUT NOW, she's come out with a 300+ page cookbook full of brilliant, healthful recipes.  The book is The Food You Crave and it is not a diet/weight loss book but rather a source of nutrient rich, well balanced recipes.  The fact that the food is not overly fat/calorie laden is a bonus. 

When I jumped over to Amazon for the link I noticed the book had a full five stars and 43 reviews.  No surprise, I have been cooking through it for weeks now and not encountered a single recipe that didn't a) turn out well or b) taste delicious.  They are all in the permanent rotation now, but the biscotti in particular stands out. 

We have all had bad, bad biscotti but forget about that.  Here is a cookie that contains only a 1/2 cup of sugar for twelve servings, uses a mere 1/4 cup of heart healthy olive oil for the fat, has a myriad of flavor in every bite, keeps for over a week, and is insane dipped into a cup of black coffee.

When you slice the half-baked log it yields enough pieces to exactly cover a half sheet pan.  Isn't that delightful? 

Ellie Krieger's Chocolate Cherry Almond Biscotti

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 c whole-wheat pastry flour or regular whole wheat flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1/4 c olive oil

1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup dried tart cherries, finely chopped

1/2 cup raw almonds, finely chopped

2 ounces good quality dark chocolate (60-70%), finely chopped

Preheat the oven to 350.

In a medium bowl whisk together the flours, baking powder, and salt.  In a large bowl, beat together the sugar, eggs, oil, orange zest, and vanilla until well combined.  In batches, add the flour mixture until the mixture forms a dough.  Stir in the cherries, almonds, and chocolate.

Transfer the dough to a floured work surface and knead several times.  Shape into a log about 10 inches long and 3 inches wide.  Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes.  Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for 15 minutes.

With a serrated knife, cut the log across at a diagonal into 1/2 inch thick slices.  Arrange on the baking sheet, cut side down, and bake for 10 minutes.  Turn the cookies over and bake until golden 5 to 10 minutes longer.  (Go 10!) Transfer to a wire rack to cool.  Keep the biscotti stored at room temperature in an airtight container where they will keep for about a week.

* lightly fill the teaspoon with zest, otherwise the orange is too much (for me)

* really saw with the serrated knife instead of pressing to keep the biscotti from breaking

For Becca ; )

Good Day, Good Dinner.

What do you do when you come home from traveling abroad on your husband's last full day home for over a month to an empty kitchen but desperately want to have a good day that ends with a satisfying home cooked meal and do not want to spend one precious moment of this day in the grocery store, the nearest of which is over twenty miles away?

You turn over your garden in preparation for spring and find three plump earthworms.

And it's all downhill after that.

Ava caught nearly every one,

and was right by her Daddy's side (as usual) when he started to clean them.

And the next thing I know I am on the couch for thirty minutes rocking and patting and wiping and telling her how God made fish for us to eat and Jesus himself ate them many, many times and I am pretty sure that they were one of his very favorite foods.  And, no they don't feel the pain of their death, it is instant. 

But secretly I have my doubts.

Then I told her just to let it all out because Mama knows exactly how she feels.

I do believe our little pond grows the most delicious fish this side of the Mississippi.  One bite and I was transported right back to 1983 - Gramoo's screened back porch, bare feet dangling off a wood bench, paper plate balanced on my lap of tiny pieces of fresh caught bream and perch carefully picked off the bone by my Mama, an orange cat meowing by the screen door and Gramoo saying, "Don't feed that cat Karen, or it'll start hanging around."  Seriously, it was like time travel.  You can not get fish like this in a restaurant.  You can not buy fish like this at the store.   

So very satisfying.  The whole bit of it.

Highlights From a Bread Baking Trip...

...during which I couldn't bake bread, sleep past six, have Starbuck's more than once, accept the newspaper, make in room telephone calls, drink the "complimentary" water, eat the French Press Sandwich, order the cinnamon cake, or go to Crate & Barrel.  But managed to laugh constantly and have a really good time.  Concierge!

Becca signs in.  I take blurry picture (raise that ISO!).

Then Becca was off to learn and I was off to the gelato bar downstairs.

I sat at a little table outside the classroom that overlooked the store below.  Quietly, I read my new cookbook (LOVE IT), ate my gelato (and roasted brussel sprouts and four grain cranberry pilaf) and watched people shop.  Statistically speaking, the average shoppers in the Dallas, TX Lover's Lane Central Market at 8:00pm on a Friday is well dressed college students buying alcoholic beverages in six packs and elaborate desserts from the bakery.  And occasionally flowers, too.  Funny.

My Humperdink's late lunch.  I anticipated the Central Market fare so I ate light.

Heh heh.

On the way home, I grabbed my camera for this once in a lifetime shot of a cow shaped pond.  And after downloading and viewing it full size, I found other impressive pond art:  The Dog's Head, Upside Down Bunny Rabbit, Rubber Ducky, Shark, and Fish.  I had no idea people were doing this.  Wow, Texans are so clever.

I didn't learn to bake bread, but I did learn that good things come from wrong turns, Becca speaks Spanish, I don't like the pink lemonade flavor of EmergenC, Gate 23 takes you to Kileen, something is waiting for us in Denton, whole cumin seeds are good for something, Pomegranate Gus sodas spew when opened hastily, cheese curds really do squeak in your teeth!, I'd rather give up my TV than my TomTom, and I am lucky to have a sister.  Concierge!

Pie.

I believe that of all the things one can create in the kitchen, pie is my favorite.  For one, it's combinations of crusts and fillings are endless, there is truly a pie for every person.  And two, it's pastry crusts and custard fillings are just tricky enough that to make one well is to prove you've done your time in the kitchen.  And three, my favorite thing of all, a pie is a work of art, a reflection of the maker, unique to that person, like a finger print.

But MY pies were yucky and weird and it was all because of that high and mighty pastry crust that has as many recipe versions as there are stars in the sky and 'rules' so specific you may as well be rolling dough in a mine field.

Every so often though, fueled by reviews/pictures like these and these, I work up the nerve to try again and Sunday was one of those days. Pioneer Woman's Apple Pie was the plan so earlier that day I set out to find the next crust recipe to try.  I wanted a basic recipe that used butter and shortening and no eggs or milk and finally settled on one of Emeril's recipes.

Oh my, I enjoyed making this pie.  FINALLY something clicked and it all came together, a good recipe, easy on the ice water, whatever miracle happens during the hour rest in the fridge that turns a shaggy, loose pile of dough into something cohesive and rollable, parchment paper, rolling in one direction, a long spatula, the  t r a n s f e r , everything.  I didn't have to call Porterhouse once and at the end of it all I had this.

And it was all downhill from there.

Delicious.  And there should have been one last photo with glistening caramel, but it turns out that I can not make caramel AND walk into the living room to sit with JD for a brief moment to catch the part on Disc 1 where the lone baby elephant, blinded from a sandstorm and near death from dehydration, accidentally gets turned around beneath his mother's feet and is following her scent trail BUT IN THE WRONG DIRECTION, away from the watering hole that they have been traveling for days to reach.  You just can't watch Planet Earth and do anything else. 

But, the pie was fabulous even without it and there is always next time I make it.

Because I can, you know - make a pie.

Resolution #3.

Organize the hideous, shameful, embarrassing mess that is my recipes.

It's not that I didn't have a system, I did.  There was The Drawer for recipes 'to try'.

And The Binder for 'tried and trues'.

But, the drawer was supposed to be used for my current issues of cooking magazines.  And THE BINDER?  The binder and I had several issues from the start, the main one being that I don't like binders.  Especially three ring binders whose rings don't close properly.  Binders are crap.

So, without further ado, my new RMS.

(Recipe Management System)  She's gray (my favorite color) and sturdy and unassuming, has no movable parts, will hold a ton of recipes without taking up too much space, was inexpensive, fun to put together, and is even more fun to use.

It required:

• A file box
• Hanging file folders
• Sheet protectors
• Sticker printer paper
• Fine Sharpie

I know this isn't rocket science but the satisfaction level is out of this world.

And now, I get to FILE.  Yeah.

Resolution #1.

Grow more of the things we eat.

Here is the start of my new life as a farmer - a tiny, indoor herb garden to bring Basil, Parsley, Thyme, Cilantro, Chives, Oregano, and Rosemary.

And (thank you Becca) my new perfectly petite indoor fruit tree,

that is just about to bloom.

When I was a child, our backyard was small, if I remember right - only about 50 cartwheels wide from one side to the other, but it was full of things to eat.  Daddy grew food, a vegetable garden of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, carrots and such and fruits of many varieties, like apples, blueberries, peaches, plums, muscadines, and raspberries.

I saw a seed turn to a sprout, a sprout to flowering plant, and flower to fruit or vegetable. 

I ate HOME GROWN tomatoes still warm from the sun and wax-less cucumbers with the prickles still on.

I picked all the green blueberries a girl could ever want.  Do you know how hard it is to find green blueberries at the grocery store?

It's Jack and Ava's turn.

Pass it on.

In case this picture doesn't speak for itself, let me say -

these are the best basic Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Ever.

Please, find the recipe here.

A Birthday Celebration.

A present -

that you liked very much.

A Birthday Wish from Daddy -

that you loved.

A Birthday Cake -

that was iced with a custom blue color created entirely by Ava who claimed to know the exact shade of blue that you like best.

And three candles -

your favorite part of all.

Or was it?