imperfect

Seven years ago today, I woke up in tears. It was my due date for the baby who we would come to know and love as Sadie, but I had been in and out of labor for three weeks, and I was convinced that I would be pregnant forever. Even though there is no actual case of a woman staying pregnant for the rest of her life, somehow so many women go through the experience of suspecting that they will be the first.
By the end of that day, I was a mother, and tired as I was from all that, well, birth, I didn't sleep at all. I looked at Sadie's face the entire night, absolutely amazed. Of course, I was in love, and in awe, and all of that. But there was something else. I had had all sorts of images of what my baby would look like. My own birth was well photographed (even published, but that is another story), and I have no shortage of pictures of myself in my first day of life. I assumed that my baby would look like me, that she would have a full head of dark hair, that her nose would turn up like mine had. It was just what I saw in my mind.
When Sadie was born, she was entirely bald. Her face was dominated by the most magnificent and royal nose. It was gigantic. She cast her gaze around the room like she owned it, and she looked like an eagle. I looked at that face, and it was not only so different from mine, it was different than anything I could have imagined, and at that moment, I thought, "I have no control over this." Birth is a messy thing, and as magical and life changing as the moment when a baby comes into the world is, it is also a good moment to get used to letting go of your ideas of how things will be.


In preparation for Sadie's seventh birthday, I decided to make pop tarts.

The day before her birthday was a little bit packed, but I carved aside a few minutes to blend together the dough. Like always when it comes to me and pastry, the whole thing seemed too dry, and although I added so much more water than the recipe specified, it still didn't quite hold together. I just pressed and pressed and hoped for the best. When it came time to roll it out, it started to look more promising.

Still though, I pressed holes back together. I patched here and there. I felt doubtful. I was instructed to measure carefully so that I would have nice, even rectangles. No matter how I try to have nice, even anything in my life, my kitchen is where straight lines go to die.
I'm trying to get better at this, but as things stand right now, I will never be a pastry chef. I will continue to be...rustic.


Sadie has been coming into herself in a pretty cool way lately. Seven looks good on her, I must say. I think that she has been really becoming aware of how much she can accomplish, and so, ironically, she doesn't have to try to control everything, either. It's so nice to see her relax a bit. She is just having more fun with her days, I think. Finally, every moment does not have to be perfect for her.

Who started this whole idea of making perfect looking food at home? Was it Martha? I'm thinking that it might have come earlier than that. Maybe it's my deficiency with the whole straight line element, but there is enough to stress over without cursing myself in the kitchen because my icing piped out funny, or, ahem, my crust didn't quite keep together. Enough!

On her birthday, we ate pop tarts, and the jam squeezed out of every little space. They were beautiful in a non-traditional sense. These were no fashion models, but they sure had a nice personality.

This recipe came from the April issue of Bon Appetit, and in the photograph that accompanies the recipe, the pastries are laid out in a perfect star, each equal rectangle devoid of any little leak of jam. The powdered sugar is shaken in such a way that I suspect it might actually have been placed, grain by grain by some sad intern dreaming of the day when they might be able to eat one of these lovely snacks. Stunning.

Maybe your pop tarts will look like that. That is so great, and I applaud your success! But if they don't, then I urge you to embrace the character of your own homemade deliciousness. If the crust falls apart, or the jam comes through, and you even think about feeling any anxiety or stress about the whole thing, repeat after me:

These are going to taste so good.

And oh boy, they will. The nice thing about personality, is that it is what counts.

"Pop-Tarts"
adapted from Bon Appetit, April 2010

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour plus additional for shaping and rolling
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 sticks (1 cup) chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
10 tablespoons ice water, or more if needed (note: the original recipe calls for 4 tablespoons, but this just didn't even start to do it for me. Start low, but be aware that you might need as many as 10 or 12)
10-12 tablespoons fruit preserves (I used blueberry rhubarb that I made last week, but any will do, and low or no sugar will be best here)
powdered sugar, for dusting

Whisk the flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Add the butter, and using your fingertips, rub the butter in until it the whole mixture resembles coarse meal. Add ice water by the tablespoonfuls, tossing with your hands or a fork until the dough starts to stick together. When you pick up a handful and it stays together when you press it, it is ready.
Gather dough into two balls and shape each half into a disk. Wrap in plastic and chill at least an hour.
Line 2 large rimmed baking pans with parchment. If you have limited freezer space, and you cant put two pans in your freezer, you can probably get them all onto one pan, but if you can do the two, it is safer. Working with one disk at a time, roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 13x11 inches. Trim to a 12x10-inch rectangle, and cut into eight 5x3-inch rectangles.
Arrange 4 rectangles, spaced apart, on each sheet. Spoon about 1 tablespoon of jam down the center of each rectangle. Top with a a second rectangle, and gently press together at the edges. Then double seal it with a fork, pressing the edges all around the rectangle. Repeat with the other tarts. Poke each top with a toothpick a few times. Cover with plastic wrap, and freeze tarts on sheets for at least two hours and up to one week.
Position 1 rack in the top third of the oven, and one rack on the lower third. Preheat to 375 degrees. Bake frozen tarts uncovered until golden, reversing sheets after 15 minutes, 25-30 minutes total. Immediately transfer tarts to a rack. Sift powdered sugar lightly over the tarts, and serve warm.

pizza dough in your food processor

You see, we have a bit of a pizza issue in our marriage.
I've told you a little about it I think, but it's time we have the whole thing out in the open.
Joey worked at a pizza place in Denver for nine years. He started folding boxes there far before he was of legal working age, and moved on to working in the kitchen and delivering pizzas when he could get behind the wheel.
His father also worked there, and still delivers pizzas once a week. You could say that this place was, well, a family institution. I think that if one took a cell sample from Joey when he was 18, they would find that he was probably about 88% pizza. It is part of his chemical make up, but it is also, in some ways, the food of his soul.

I like pizza- I always have. I like greasy pizza and healthy pizza. I can't really argue with bread and cheese. But when Joey was growing up eating pizza all day long, I had my own limited diet. I was a picky kid, and for years, my mother made me noodles, with broccoli and cheese on the side. My chemical makeup was more like 88% wheat, cheese, and broccoli.
So you can guess what my favorite kind of pizza is.
Once at the pizza place where Joey grew up, he claims that the manager threw someone out of the joint for asking if they could put broccoli on his pizza. Joey cheers as he tells this story. You can imagine the conflict, I'm sure.
But it doesn't end there. As you might have noticed, I like to make food at home. The dining out budget is fairly nonexistent, and most of the time we can have more fun and eat better at home. And what's more, it's my thing! So, every so often, I make pizza at home.
I make the dough, I make the sauce. Hell, I even make the cheese. And when it comes time to shape the dough, I fall apart. There are holes in the bottom- the whole mess has to be catapulted onto the pizza stone. And it is never remotely circular.

Every time I am about to embark on this failing mission, I appeal to Joey.
"You know how to do this. Won't you make this right?"
He puts on his stubborn face. (I have one of these too, I'm sure, but he is an Aries, and so his is much better)
"Pizza is like Chinese Food. It should not be made at home."
He says this as I am mangling the dough, stretching it into something that the girls will refer to as teddy bear head pizza.
Maybe he's right, I don't know. But maybe I'm right! Maybe everything should be made at home!
Part of the issue until recently has been that he has hated my crust. I have hated my crust too, but I have my stubborn moments as well, and I suffered through. By refusing to employ his expertise to shape my dough into lovely little pizzas, he was, I think, trying to get me to stop making pizza at home altogether. That way, he could stop having to eat pizza that was so far below his standard, and as he saw it, just wrong.
But then, something changed.
Last year, Joey walked in the door one day with a new Cuisinart food processor. I had had a line of food processors before it, all found at the dump or handed down from friends who had upgraded. Two months earlier, the most recent food processor had died, and I had cried. This day was not my birthday or mother's day, it was simply the day that Joey chose to express his love with a random and substantial material good, and I'm telling you, I felt very very loved. We made popcorn, sat together on the couch, and we watched the how-to dvd as if it were the latest Oscar nominated sci fi thriller. And as I observed the resident bread expert for Cuisinart make his pizza dough in there, I thought, that's it. That's my crust. It had all the same ingredients as crusts I had tried in the past, but something deeper in me thought, "this appliance has magic in it."

It took me a while to try it out, but when I did, the response was immediate. Joey took a bite of the oddly shaped pie, and, deeply confused, commented on how good the crust was.
Magic.
I made it again, and Joey started to get used to the idea of actually enjoying pizza at home. And the other day, as I pulled dough that I had made earlier out of the fridge, he said,
"Do you want me to make them?"
Success.
He made four perfect little pizzas, one for each of us. I used this sauce, which is fantastic for pizza, and of course this cheese, which I've found melts like a dream. Plain for Rosie. Bacon for Joey. Bacon and spinach for Sadie. And for me? Bacon and, well, you know.

Pizza Dough in Your Food Processor
adapted from the esteemed Cuisinart Instruction and Recipe Booklet

makes 3 medium sized crusts, 4 big personal pizzas, or 6 little ones- in short, feeds four with leftovers for lunch

2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 1/4 cups warm water
3 1/3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 teaspoons olive oil

In a liquid measuring cup, combine the water, yeast, and sugar. Let stand for five minutes, and watch for little bubbles. If there is no activity at all, throw away and start with new yeast.
Fit your food processor with the dough blade. In the bowl of the food processor, combine the flour, salt, and 2 teaspoons of the olive oil.
With the machine running on dough speed, add the liquid as fast as the flour will absorb it. Process until the dough forms a ball and clings to the blade, then process for another 30 seconds.
With the remaining teaspoon of oil, oil a medium sized bowl and a piece of plastic wrap. Place the dough in the bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, and leave it in a warm place to rise. Let it rise for an hour, or until it has doubled in bulk. After and hour, punch it down, and use immediately or place in the refrigerator until ready to use.

oreos

Over the last couple of days, something has become very clear to me.
I live in a part of the world where people are conscious about the food they eat. The Co-op gets as much business as the Price Chopper, and each of our many CSA's have long wait lists, full of people just begging for celeriac and spinach. To put it mildly, this town eats a lot of sprouts.
But I knew all of that. What I did not know is that there is also a deep passion in the hearts of my friends and neighbors for the oreo cookie.

You see, I've been working on this cookie lately. I've had a few homemade oreos in my day, and although I'm never one to refuse a cookie, they don't tend to do the trick. So often, the cookie part is downright chewy, and that is just wrong, all wrong.
And there's another thing. For an oreo to really be an oreo, the cookie must be black. It must be crunchy, and it must get stuck in the teeth. For the joy of the oreo is that it cannot be secretly consumed; the moment the mouth opens to deny the eating of the cookie, the black lined teeth tell the whole story. And oreo must be eaten proudly, and in the open air. This is not a shame cookie.


I'm good at keeping secrets when it matters, but at other times, I'm a bit of a talker. And as I've immersed myself in this oreo adventure, I've mentioned it here and there, just that this is what I'm working on this week. Every time, I get the same reaction.

"Can I come over?"

I'm thinking I could make a lot of friends with these cookies.

In this oreo, the cookie that sandwiches the cream is adapted from Alice Medrich's cocoa wafer from that book that I adore, Pure Dessert. I lowered the sugar in the cookie quite a bit to keep the bitter cocoa quality that the store- bought oreo has, although in that case, the bitterness might be all those odd ingredients in there. The cookies themselves can also be used to replace store bought chocolate wafers in treats like ice box cake and chocolate cookie crusts. This is a cookie you want to know- it will come in handy. The filling is simple, butter, earth balance vegetable shortening, vanilla, milk and salt. I'm pretty sure the other version has a whole lot more ingredients, but somehow, these few seem to capture it.


Due to some serious sweet eating last week, Joey and the girls decided to take the week off from sugar this week. Well, actually, I decided that the girls would take a week off and Joey decided to join them. I was very supportive of his sweet-free week, until he refused to try my oreos. "This is work!" I said. "I need you to see if they're the real deal!"
He held off for two days, and then I did something I am not proud of. I begged.
Tonight, he consented. After Sadie was safely in bed where she could not witness his betrayal, he ate one, and then he ate another to be sure.
"I need milk. And I need more cookies."

Oh yes. The real deal.


Oreos

The Cookie:
adapted from Alice Medrich, Pure Dessert

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
14 tablespoons unsalted butter, slightly softened
3 tablespoons whole milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

The Filling:

2 ounces unsalted butter, softened
2 ounces Earth Balance brand vegetable shortening, softened
1 cup confectioners sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon whole milk
1 tablespoon vanilla

For the cookies: Combine the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt and baking soda in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times until completely combined. Cut the butter into tablespoon sized chunks and throw them into the food processor. Again, pulse several times. Combine the milk and vanilla in a small cup. With the food processor running, slowly add the milk mixture to the batter, continuing to process until the batter clumps around the blade. Lay a large piece of wax paper on the counter and put the batter onto it. Gently press the batter into a log about 2 inches in diameter. The batter will be soft, and this will be a messy moment. I wrapped the batter in the wax paper and then shaped it, which worked pretty well. Put the log in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and make sure that your racks are in the upper and lower thirds of the oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Remove the log from the fridge, and unwrap it on a cutting board. With your sharpest knife, cut the log into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices, catching each slice as you go and laying it on the baking sheet. If the dough breaks, give it a few minutes to warm up and then start again. Give at least 2 inches between cookies- they will spread a bit. Bake the cookies for 15 minutes, rotating the pans and switching their location halfway through baking. The cookies will cook up and deflate- they are done about a minute after they deflate. Place the pans on a cooling rack and cool completely before filling.

For the filling: Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer or mixing bowl. With the mixer or by hand, beat together until all elements are thoroughly combined and the mixture is smooth and creamy.

To fill the cookies: You have two options. You can go the lazy route and get these into your belly faster, or you can go a bit more Martha. It's totally up to you. Lazy is definitely my style, but I like to give you choices, because someone's got to make the pretty food out there.
Lazy route: Spread about 1/2 inch layer of filling on one cookie. Put another cookie on top. Eat.
More work for style points: Refrigerate the filling for at least an hour. Put about a cup at a time of the filling between two pieces of wax paper, and roll it out to 1/2 inch. With a 2-inch biscuit cutter, cut circles in the filling. Use a butter knife or metal spatula to transfer each circle to a cookie. You have to work fast, as the filling warms quickly. Admire, then eat.

These cookies are good at room temperature for at least 5 days, and great out of the freezer indefinitely.

butter

Before we kick off cabbage week (oh my god aren't you so excited? Oh my god, I'm so excited!), I thought we would make a little bit of butter, you know, so we can put it on our cabbage tomorrow.
I've been making butter here and there, and of course enjoying it in the way that I do with activities of that nature, and I thought it might be time to tell you about it. It is February after all, and I'm guessing we all need a bit of a thrill, and homemade butter might just do the trick.

My butter so far has mostly been made from raw cream, which I leave out for a few hours to ripen as raw cream so nicely does. Technically, this is cultured butter. But because I know most of you are probably not making your butter from raw cream, I decided to buy some plain old ultra pasteurized cream at the store and see what transpired.


As I'd hoped, any kind of heavy cream will give you a nice little ball of butter, so long as you whip it for long enough.

Butter can most certainly be made in a jar with a bunch of hyper kids in a room who would really like to shake something, but we're not going to go there today.
Today, it's the Kitchen aid. If you don't have a kitchen aid, I assume that an electric hand mixer will do the trick. If you don't have an electric hand mixer, you better find yourself some hyper children. I have a few if you would like to borrow them.

Let me just say something right away, just so you don't feel like I didn't tell you. Unless you have a cow in your backyard, this is not cost effective. Do not make butter because you think it will be cheaper than store bought. There are a lot of reasons to make butter, but cost is not one of them.
I bought 16 oz. of plain old non-organic whipping cream. It cost me just under $3.00. From this much cream, I got 6 oz. of butter. That's a stick and a quarter, for $3.00. So there, I told you.

So why, you ask? Why should I get myself some cream and get churning? Mostly because it tastes fantastic. Butter is like garlic or lemons or so many things that we get so used to eating when they are old. Freshly made butter is sweet and creamy and wonderful in a way that is hard to find in store bought butter. But that's not all! Butter is also a fun and fascinating science experiment. For an ingredient that most of us tend to have around at all times, I'd bet you that most people have never seen the butter break from the buttermilk, or how exactly the whole process goes. It's a good one, because it's easy and the rewards come quick. You can make butter in about 5 minutes, which most kids even have an attention span for. And then of course, the best reason to make butter is that it's butter! That you made! Talk about food super heroes.

So, let's get to it then, shall we?

You will need 16 oz. heavy cream and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt. Combine these in the bowl of your mixer with the beater attachment (not the whisk! the butter will get stuck) and put on high speed. The cream will fly a bit, so you might want to carefully put a towel over the mixer. Just stay and watch so that you can keep peeking in.
The cream will start to look like whipped cream after a minute or two, like this:


Once you've gotten it to this point, keep your eyes on the bowl. The cream will get whipped, then overwhipped, and then:

It breaks. Now you can stop the mixer. With raw cream, this process takes about a minute, but with ultrapasteurized, it was more like five.
When your cream breaks, Pour the buttermilk off the butter into a jar. Strain the errant butter out of it, and then reserve the buttermilk for making the best pancakes you have ever had. I'm serious about this.

Now, the goal is to get all of the buttermilk out of the butter. First do this by squeezing the butter.

Then you want to rinse it in cool water.


Rinse the butter, and then squeeze it again.

Repeat this a few times, until there is very little liquid coming from the butter. You can also knead it a bit, turning it in on itself.

When it feels like the buttermilk is out, you can refrigerate or put into your butter bell and it is ready to go. Or, you could make butter shapes that would make your kids very happy. To do this, lay the butter between two sheets of plastic wrap or wax paper.

Roll with a rolling pin until it is about 3/4 inch thick.

Dig out your best cookie cutters.

And you have butter valentines!

Because the butter is so soft and pliable at this point, it's also a good time to make herb butters. Or mix with honey and cinnamon for a fancy spread for weekend toast.
Now you have butter. All we need is a little cabbage.
Tomorrow friends, tomorrow.