America Runs on Dunkin

So I must admit that these past few weeks, we've been reading quite a bit of Arnie the Doughnut This is a classic and delicious book brought to us by a friends Liz and J a few years ago. It is a fabulous book which will inevitably make your children want to eat doughnuts.
Now we eat doughnuts every so often- we've even made them, but the doughnuts we find around here aren't the sprinkly and colored kind who speak from the pages of Arnie. Now why talking doughnuts would induce us to such hunger, I'm not sure, but it overwhelms the whole family. And so we decided to take a little field trip down the hill last Saturday morning, to Dunkin Donuts.
Although this business has been in my town for quite a while, I've never been there. But I seem to be the only one. It was packed. Doughnuts were flying, coffee was flowing, it was a regular party down there. We let the girls each choose two flavors, and then we were out of there, famous box in hand.
As you may know, I have a bit of a resistance to oddly colored food in my children's tummies. But every so often that all goes out the window. Watching Rosie delicately eat her "pink flavored" doughnut, one might never believe that I had worked so hard to create the perfect pink raspberry puree in order to make the requested pink cupcakes for Rosie's third birthday.

And although even I sometimes try to forget it, it seems unimaginable that I would have worked so hard to color Sadie's last birthday cake green for her Wizard of Oz party, finally settling on Spirulina buttercream. (and no, I don't recommend it)

And how did the girls like their sprinkly brightly colored treats? They ate them happily, but afterwards Sadie claimed to like Taft Farm's fresh doughnuts more, and Rosie agreed, saying, "Yeah, I'm not sure about this Dunkin Donuts farm".

So later in the morning, when Sadie was dancing off her doughnuts at dance class, Rosie and I stopped in at Taft Farms to say hello to our old favorites.

The owner apologized for the small quantity on the plate, admitting that they only make them a few at a time to keep them warm. I told him that was quite alright with me.

Golden Brussels Sprouts

Okay, so I wasn't even going to write about these, because the recipe's all simple, and it has already been beautifully documented here, but this is what I made tonight, and it might just have been the best thing I've ever had. Or almost, I mean I know that's an odd thing to say about brussels sprouts, and maybe it has something to do with the nice day, and my sunny walk with my mother, and my well behaved children flourishing in swim classes today which continues to ease my maternal guilt. It's been a nice day. And for dinner we had squash soup and these little beauties, which we all just grabbed by the handful from the bowl until they were gone, a dazed look in our eyes like we were eating caramel popcorn or something else equally addictive. And when the bowl was empty, we were silent, except for Sadie, who just kept saying, I like brussels sprouts over and over. Wow. What an experience. I suggest it. So go look at Heidi's beautiful recipe and make it, but times it by 20, because it will blow your mind, and you won't be able to stop.

slow cooker porridge

Okay, for all you gourmands out there, skip this one and check back soon. But for you parents who feel that school mornings might just make you start to scream hysterically one of these days, I've got a secret.
Do you have a slow cooker? Is it dusty? If you don't have one, buy one today. If you happen to be tag-saling soon, you'll be sure to find one, or you can by one new for next to nothing. And trust me, the thing is worth its weight in gold.
This is what you do. Before you go to sleep, pull out the slow cooker. Put grains in cooker. Put water in cooker. Don't forget to turn it on. I've forgotten, and it's very sad. In the morning, breakfast is sitting on your counter, hot and ready. And you are free to panic over the fact that you need to make lunches for picky children, or that you can't find the hairbrush and your daughter looks like like she has a bird's nest on her head, or even that your child might accept the ultimatum that "If you don't get dressed right now young lady, you're going to school in your pajamas!" (I have to say this one doesn't usually work. My kids view this option with glee). Anyway, take your pick on the subject of panic. It just doesn't have to be making breakfast. Here are the details:
Basically, go for 1 1/2 cups of grain to 6 cups of water. It's important to fill your slow cooker more that half way so that the porridge won't burn. The above measurements will feel 4 to 6 hungry people. If you have a smaller family, get a smaller slow cooker, or save some for reheating tomorrow. The most basic foolproof porridge is steel cut oats, which will be creamy and fabulous in the slow cooker. But you can experiment and mix any of the following grains.

brown rice
white rice
arborio rice (super creamy)
millet
quinoa
polenta
barley

Go wild. Have a ball, and if you have any suggestions for dealing with the other morning panic topics, I would be so grateful.

The Great Tomato Debate: Solved and Resolved!

So, if you've been around here for a little while, you might remember the unbelievable and somewhat exciting mess that I made of many pounds of tomatoes last year. The question at hand was this: How does one successfully freeze a tomato? I'd had some failed attempts in the past that were horrible curdled tomato nastiness when I defrosted them, and I wanted to be one of those impressive people who has a great way of freezing tomatoes. So I choose the two most popular methods, and I decided to make an experiment of it in the interest of making myself a better and more impressive person. Just to recap, these are the two methods that I worked with.

1. I made really good tomato sauce- I deseeded and deskinned the tomatoes and everything. I did this late at night, cooked the sauce all night, and it was amazing. My recipe is here.
2. I quartered and slow roasted the tomatoes. I sprinkled with salt and pepper, put on a tray, and baked for a long time. I played with the time, but I always roasted the tomatoes at 400 degrees, for at least an hour, but up to 2 1/2 hours. Then I let them cool and put them into ziplocs.

Now as you can imagine, these two methods involve very different levels of work. So I did them both, put them away in the freezer, and waited patiently for the time when I absolutely needed to check the results.

And why would I need to freeze tomatoes? Because in February, the store plays a trick on us. Thinking that you will be too busy with your life to notice, they call this a tomato:

Yuck. Hard. Tasteless. Expensive. Worthless.
I know I'm being hard on them here, but have you bought one of these lately? I think, if anything, I'm being easy on these "tomatoes".

So yes, if we are to eat tomatoes in the winter, we must freeze the tomatoes. Or can, if you like, but that's a whole other blog post, and certainly not one you're getting out of me.

Are you dying with suspense? Ready for the answer? Get ready....

They both work really well! Do both!
The sauce stayed phenomenal, and the roasted tomatoes were so useful, I used them as I wold canned tomatoes.
So my suggestion is this- one day in late August/ early September when you're feeling like outdoing yourself and you have access to 20 or 30 pounds of tomatoes, make sauce. Then freeze it. But then, all through tomato season, roast tomatoes whenever you have a trays worth. Then you'll be totally set.
Of course, as resolved as I am at this moment, and as impressed as I feel with myself, you're always welcome to throw off my pride with a new method to try. Feel free to share.

Rosie's Strawberry Shortcake

There are a few things that I cling to when I am trying to feel like a good mother. Today, both of my kids kept their braids in all day long. Looking at their neat little hairstyles made me feel like a good mother. Last week, they started swim lessons at the community center. Watching them (finally) flailing around in the pool under the educational eye of a red cross swim teacher eased my troubled mother's heart. Because the truth is, and I can't really say why this is the case, there are are these little things that gnaw at me (Why can't I just get my kids into a swim class in the winter?! Why is the girls' hair so messy all the time?). When I can ease these little ridiculous anxieties that probably stem from my loving yet hippy nontraditional upbringing, I get a real moment of peace, and I can say, Yes, I am a mommy and sometimes a good one even. Silly, I know, but I'm not alone here right?
I kind of feel this way about birthday cake. Months before the girls' birthdays, I ask them what kind of cake they want, and then I think about it for a while. Rosie was pretty clear that for her fourth birthday she wanted strawberry shortcake. I don't always give my kids what they want, but I've got a real weakness for this birthday cake thing. One of these days, they're going to figure out that I will just about do anything to fulfill their birthday cake wishes, and the requests will start to get crazy. But until then, they go pretty easy on me.
Rosie's birthday is in February, and let's just say that the strawberries are not so plentiful at this time of year. Actually, they had a two for one deal going on strawberries at Big Y the morning of the party, but the problem is that when my Rose eats non-organic strawberries, she tends to puke her guts out for a good twelve hours afterward. So I pulled out the last bag of frozen strawberries that we picked from this really amazing farm, and I decided that I would make 1234 cake with whipped cream and strawberry sauce. This is a good cake. Make this cake. I hope that it brings you as much fulfillment ease of your anxieties as it brought me.


1234 Cake from most cookbooks by Alice Waters

makes 2 9- inch round cakes (can be easily halved or made into cupcakes)

1 cup milk
2 cups sugar
3 cups all purpose or cake flour, sifted, then measured
4 eggs
1 cup butter, softened
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350. Butter the cake pans and line the bottom of each with parchment paper. Butter the paper and dust the pans with flour, tapping off the excess. Separate the eggs and set aside. Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add the sugar, cream until fluffy. Beat in the four egg yolks, one at a time and then the vanilla. Then add the flour mixture and the milk alternately, starting and ending with one third of the flour. Stir until just incorporated. In another bowl, whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks. Stir one third of the whipped egg whites into the batter, then gently fold the rest into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a toothpick comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes.

Now to make it Rosie's strawberry shortcake:
Put 1 1/2 pounds of frozen strawberries in a medium saucepan. Add 2T cup maple syrup. Cook until hot and bubbly. Cool to room temp.
Whip 2 1/2 cups heavy cream with 1 T maple syrup and 1 tsp vanilla extract.
Lay the two cakes out side by side, upside down so the flat part is facing up. Mix a little bit of the strawberry sauce with some of the whipped cream and spread on top of on of the cakes. Put the other cake on top- the flat parts should be together. Then coat the whole thing with whipped cream. After cutting into slices, put the strawberry sauce on each individual slice.

the salon challenge

So you want to take the challenge? Here's how it came about...

A ways back, I heard an essay on the NPR series This I Believe, that I just couldn't get out of my mind. Jim Haynes wrote about his weekly salons, dinners held in his Paris home for upwards of sixty people, all brought together from the various ends of the earth.
Dinner parties have always held a place in the warmest depths of me. As a precocious child of a single mother, I was often happily dragged to sit down dinners farther back in my history that I can even recount, and the warm glow around a table never fails to revive a sense of calm and comfort in me. As an adult (if that is truly what I am now), I love to create these dinners, planning menus and seating arrangements.
I love to create them, but more often than not, they don't actually happen. The girls occupy most of my food energy, and I find that four and six are not necessarily the best ages for dinner party guests. I have so many excuses why I can't throw a good dinner party- the dishwasher broke two years ago from Rosie hanging on it every day, the table's not quite big enough, money is tight, take your pick. But the truth is, I love to invite people to dinner, and even more, I love to invite combinations of people, and some people I don't even really know. It is just too easy to lock myself away up here, and I find the few dinner parties that have actually occurred around my table to be nothing short of expansive. And I don't know about you, but I could always use a bit more expanse in my world.
So here is the challenge. Every two months, have a dinner party. I will provide a general theme, and the only other rules are as follows.
1. You must invite at least six people beyond your immediate family.
2. Some percentage of your guests must be people that you don't know all that well.
3. It must be a sit down dinner.

the June 1 challenge theme
my dinner party

the August 1 challenge theme
my dinner party


the October 1 challenge theme
some dinner party thoughts
my dinner part one
my dinner part two

the January theme
my dinner party 

the May 2011 theme
my dinner party

Home Again, part 2

So I must follow up on this stolen lemons business that I mentioned earlier. This little journey takes place on the final day of my trip to LA. Here is the background:
After several days in Southern California, I had worked my way into a very sick and slightly pessimistic mood. My voice was gone, I was feverish, and I was done with Southern California as a whole. After all, there is only so much one can take of this:

Did you know that every palm tree in LA was planted in some way? I mean, this place was molded out of clay.
So here I am, sick and ready to go home, and I am staying with my very dear friend in South Pasadena by this point. Not only has she not seen me at all over the course of this visit, but she has also driven me around and folded the bed down for me every night so that I can drop into it with my clothes on. Luckily I could muster the energy to take off my red LA heels. Ouch. So here we are, my cell phone keeps ringing but I say to her, "Let's walk- I want to see your little town and feel like I've been somewhere on this trip!" And she looks at me dubiously, doubting that I'm up for it. But me fever is low enough to just give me a healthy flush, and I say, "We are taking a walk, and I am seeing South Pasadena." (South Pasadena fact: did you know that this is the town that the RNC used to show Main Street, USA?)
So we're walking, and I'm sweating, and my cell phone keeps ringing, and I answer it and think about what a good friend that I have that won't just leave me on the street because I'm talking on my phone while talking a walk that I made her take with me. But then, two really great things happen. The first is that she takes me to her favorite gourmet food store. This is not just any gourmet food store. There is a culinary school in South Pasadena, and this is it's supply store. I am now not only sweating, but also drooling. And I am so happy. Look at their spices.


I find lime oil, and gavottes, and chestnut puree, which I have been looking for so that I can make this. I am so happy. And I buy my excellent friend some pastry cups because she says she finds them intimidating, and sometimes I can be a bit mean about pushing my friends toward their fears.

And as we make our way back to her house, I confess that the only reason I would ever want to live in Southern California is for the lemon trees. And my desire for fresh wonderful lemons is so unreasonably strong, that sometimes I do think about moving to Southern California for only this reason. And my friend, my wonderful friend, you know what she does? She hops up on someone's funny little yard, and she steals four lemons for me. Can you believe her? I hope that you all have a friend this good.

So that's the end of my LA adventures. Snow and Ice and all, I like it more here. Does anyone know how to grow lemons in New England?