Tag Archive | personal: cooking

Recipe Blog: Basic Cooking Toolbox

Mar30

Originally posted on Patreon in March 2019 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

As I was blending up a tomato soup today, I was thinking about basic tools that I, well, can live without but would rather not.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list but includes things I’d buy first if I was rebuilding a kitchen from scratch.

Power Tool

An immersion blender with whisk attachment.  Blend, puree, whip – they generally come with a small food processor attachment too.

Mixing, scraping

A thin but firm metal spatula
A fisk – or whatever tool works best for you for getting lumps out of sauces.
More rubber scrapers than you think any two households need, or at least two you really like
Microplane for zesting, grating nutmeg, and more
Bamboo scraper/spatula

Bowl!  This is 100% personal preference – my favorite mixing bowls are a type by Rubbermaid that aren’t made anymore

(note: I get super sensitive to noises, thus the non-scraping-noises scraper and wisk-tool) Continue reading →

Weekend Blog: Bread-Kneader

Jan23

I have been thinking about bread.
🍞
Cal and I were discussing honorifics, which led to me remembering hlǣfdige, (See here), the word from which lady derives.

I first encountered this word in Parke Godwin’s Beloved Exile, a tale of Guinevere after the fall of Camelot. (That’s an awful cover; I much prefer this one: here). Memory provides a slightly different spelling for this and hlāfweard, but since I don’t have the book at hand and can’t find the text online, the general will have to suffice for now.

Hlǣfdige, loaf-kneader (loosely, don’t shoot me). I like that. I made a pretty standard loaf this weekend, changed only by having a really long ‘fridge rise time (because I started it Thursday night, kneaded it Friday night, and baked it Saturday around noon). I’ve been baking bread every weekend since it started getting cold — nothing all that exciting, but I like the routine of it, the kneading, the long rises, the shaping, the smell of the house as it bakes.

Hlǣfdige didn’t mean just the woman who makes the bread, of course — it referred, I’m told, to the woman in charge of a household with maids, etc. But I like the idea of being Lady Lyn, the loaf-kneader.
🍞
And if that makes my husband the hlāfweard, the guardian of the loaf… well, the cat does have a habit of eating it on occasion.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1240288.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

January By the Numbers Nine: Baking (blog Post)

Jan10

January by the numbers continues (still a day off~)!
From [personal profile] anke‘s prompt “baking” – a blog post.

I love baking in Winter!

I like baking in summer, too, and it helps that the way our house is laid out, you can run the oven in the kitchen without really heating up the living room or our offices too much, so I can bake bread and cakes all year round if I want to.

Mostly, though, in the summer I bake cookies.

I have been making bread every Sunday for a few weeks now, and I find I like it. Start the bread with a sponge the night before or early Sunday morning, and then by 2 or 3 in the afternoon everything’s ready to go, and we have fresh homemade bread for the week (anything left over and gone stale, or the bread experiments that didn’t quite work, get dried in the oven and frozen for stuffing or bread pudding).

But I like baking cakes, too, pies, crisps, biscuits, cookies… Small Batch Baking, although it has its flaws as a recipe book, was a really good start for me. If I make a cake, a lot of the time it’s somewhere between a mug cake and a small batch recipe in one of my tiny pans or ramekins (I have a tiny bundt pan. It is the world’s most adorable bundt pan). That way, we have cake for a day, just enough frosting, and then it’s gone, poof.

Last night, I made a Small Batch Banana—Pecan bread pudding (forgot the pecans), with, as above, the ends from a few weeks of homemade bread (Since homemade bread stales a lot faster than store-bought). If you’re going to make banana anything, my suggestion is: wait ‘til the bananas are black or nearly black, and then halve the sugar the recipe calls for. You get full banana taste that way! (Also, much easier to mush up).

Honestly, I could talk all day about baking. My husband does the cooking… but I do (almost) all the baking in the house, and I love it.

And it makes the house smell so nice.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1228332.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

January By the Numbers Two: Oregano (blog Post)

Jan2

January by the numbers starts here!
From kelkyag‘s prompt “oregano;” a blog post.

This one’s all me.

When we moved into our second apartment together, T and I — and a friend of ours, and a friend of his, and so on — we acquired a whole bunch of stuff-left-from-previous-roommates, thus starting a trend that would continue (with a couple pauses) for the next decade-plus: dishes, pie plates, for a little while a doll cabinet.

But back then, one of the first things we got was a collection of far too much grocery-store oregano. I think there were three containers of the stuff. And the thing is… we didn’t really cook with that many spices and herbs back then. We were in our early twenties, I barely cooked at all and T. was just starting to work on his cooking.

We ate oregano in everything for a while. And the thing is, old grocery-store oregano doesn’t taste like much and I didn’t have much of a sense of smell, so I’m not sure it added much more than a sort of dusty green color. Still. Oregano. Everywhere.

We started gardening maybe 5 years later, but it is not until three years ago that I actually started growing oregano.

This stuff, I can smell. I can taste. It’s pretty good, actually, although when it comes to herbage I much prefer parsley and sage.

But the thing about oregano is, it turns out it’s part of the mint family. (I find this weird. I’m not sure why I find this weird, but I do). And it’s a perennial. And, well, it acts like it’s in the mint family, which is to say it’s determined, invasive, and durable.

And the thing grows nearly three feet tall. Every year, without me doing anything. And the bees love it.

And we still don’t cook with oregano.

Want More?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1223112.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Weekend Recipe-testing: Now with Vegan Possum

Dec20

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsSo yep. That was my weekend: possum frosting.

(Turns out, if you google possum and chocolate, what you get isn’t a whole lot of good information on if possums are able to eat chocolate. You get mostly possum recipes. Oops.)

We were testing vegan frosting to go on a vegan cake for a vegan Christmas present for my vegan father (help I can’t vegan stop). The cake turned out great, actually — a Depression-era “crazy cake” recipe with no eggs and no butter or milk (“no eggs no butter, no flour no sugar” says the woman on the bus whose parents probably remembered the Depression). And the frosting — once we scraped off the top where the possum had gotten his nose into it — that turned out surprisingly tasty.

This week is all the vegan food-testing and making: soups for mom, cake for dad, and the bread might not be vegan but it’ll be tasty too. It’s the time of year where I’m making a lot of bread, trying new recipes or just throwing stuff in the mixer and seeing what happens (“either not enough molasses or too much” last week; this week turned out pretty good). Bonus of all the baking: it heats up the far end of the house, where the wood stove’s heat doesn’t really reach. Bonus of making soup in the winter: cooking it on the wood stove and making the whole house smell like soup.

The weather outside is frightful — by turns freezing and raining, snowing and blowing — but the fire is burning hot and the candles are lit in the windows. I’ve got silk poinsettias for my vases and bandanna-patterned wrapping paper for my presents, cookies for the baking and fresh bread hiding in the microwave (Otherwise the cat eats it).

Happy Holidays, my friends. It’s a wonderful life here in West Nowhere, NY.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1215161.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Weekend, Pinterest, Instant Pot, etc.

Aug22
  • If you use Pinterest, have you ever found yourself in Pinboard Bloat? Like, you start a board, Pinterest suggests some similar boards, so you follow them, then Pinterest is like “try these suggested pins” so you pin those and the next thing you know, your little board of, say, Addergoole Changes is a giant behemoth of mermaids and satyr beefcake and winggy people?

    Or, ah, is that just me?

  • Have I mentioned I love our InstantPot? So far, we’ve only made two dishes in it, but love it!
  • If you haven’t checked in on the new Addergoole page, you can still earn fic with comments!
  • And if you know anyone who might be interested in supporting my Patreon, Nimbus is stuck in the man-eating plant, and only the patrons can get her out!

    (a couple patrons had to reduce or drop patronizing due to funding issues, and thus we are back down below the $40 net “serial episode a month” level. Poor Nimbus! Stuck! ~Woe~!)

  • And this weekend: We installed a toilet!
    Seriously, even if they tell you when you buy a toilet that there’s a wax ring in the package, buy two. Not one, two. You won’t regret it.

    That being said, our pretty new reasonable-height dual-flush toilet is in and goes, YAY!

    Our old one had been first stained by our rusty water.

    And then some previous tenant had used something so corrosive to clean the orange that it had stripped the enamel off the porcelain.

    And then the house was winterized, and the blue dye… stained the porcelain.

    Black veined toilet! Ick!

    (we’re looking into water softeners now…)

    That’s one more step towards a non-ugly bathroom!

  • I’m low on interesting links this week, so how about you? Share your cool links!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1161402.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Weekend, with non-weekend musings, questions, and such…

Aug15

 

  • This weekend was a weekend of “oh, well, maybe later?” We went a lot of places, but mostly achieved very little.  However, it RAINED!  Lots!  *dances around in the rain*
    (Also, we did a lot of shopping, but that’s not all that exciting).

    • I’ve been thinking that for Lexember — or possibly before — I’ll do two “translation” projects — a portion of an illuminated page in Old Tongue (the language of the Ellehemaei in Fae Apoc/Addergoole) and a poem in Calenyen (for Reiassan).

      Is there anything in particular you’d like to see “translated” for such projects?

  • We went to see Ghostbusters.  My “review”, such as it is, can be seen here (warning — non-positive): https://twitter.com/lynthornealder/status/764593963034669056

  • We got an Instant Pot! It’s an electric pressure cooker, rice cooker, slow cooker, etc, etc.  We made steel cut oats in it, and they turned out pretty awesome.  
    See the Kitchn’s article on the Instant Pot here — https://t.co/P35KyOxnNm

  • The Shannara TV series has very little to do with my memories of the books, but those memories are 30-some years old.  Also? So much eye candy, and much of it male!

  • If anyone has any more pictures of this guy, cosplaying as Emergency Costume Repair, I’d love to see them.  Great idea!

  • Shutsumon introduced me to #WebFictionChat, and they are having a monthly Serial Book Club.  Check it out: https://twitter.com/Chrys_Kelly_/status/763776957314129920

  • Random moment of awesome while looking into illuminated texts — https://t.co/AazDZfuX0m this dragon climbing his way out of the text.

  • There is still one 250-word slot open in “Leave a Comment, get a fic” over at Addergoole’s new site.

  • Annnnd the meta-conversation with Jaco from Lady Taisiya’s Fourth Husband is still going strong over here: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/tag/meta-conversations

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1157120.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Grandpa-to-Me Cooking

May19

There’s a rage, it seems, for Farm-to-Table dining; there’s a few restaurants open in Ithaca right now that tout it and it gets play in some blogs. In short, it’s local food delivered to local consumers – in restaurants, it’s high end stuff made with low-food-miles food. I find it an interesting movement, but I live in the Frozen North, and I like my oranges, and my fresh produce in December, and so on.

There’s also – as we found out when we were taken out to a fancy place for dinner for our birthdays in Troy a few weeks back – a trend for buttermilk-fried ramps right now. And let me tell you, they are delicious. Ommity nommity tasty, with just enough onion flavor. We bought some ramps from our local farmer’s market and tried it out – so good

But to bring this around full circle, trendy things are pricey, and ramps have a very short growing season and are in fashion right now, so much so that people fear overharvesting.

Enter my grandparents’ farm, and the small forest there that my parents harvest for wood. And a visit to meet with my other (surviving) grandmother at my parents’ place 2 weekends past.

And my mother just happens to say “oh, would you like some ramps? We can go dig them.”

Let me tell you, grandpa’s-woods-to-table tastes even better than farm-to-table.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1107496.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Homesteading: Loaves and Lessons

Jan27

I have been learning things about bread!

If you are an experienced bread baker, most of these things will probably not be news to you. Some of them are not /recent/ news to me but I still find them interesting.

What I have been learning recently is about tenderness, crispness, and longevity.

My normal go-to loaf is Oatmeal Toasting and Sandwich Bread. It’s got milk and honey in it, it’s got whole wheat flour in it, it’s tender, it’s got a small, fine crust, and it’s great for toasting.

But I was making baked brie, and that needs a bread that can hold up to dipping.

(this, which I ended up using, is not really quite french bread. But it works).

Take away most of the sugar and all of the fat, and you end up with a crisper loaf. Increase hydration and reduce kneading in the proofing stage, and you end up with bubbles in the bread. These things I knew, but it was neat to see them in process.

What I didn’t know but learned fast was that if you take away all that fat, the bread goes stale much, much faster. That was a learning experience!

And it did, by the way, work great dipped in a drippy baked brie with fig spread. And just as great with fancy butter, toasted on top the wood stove.

Next up? Brioche!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1056183.html. You can comment here or there.

Gifts in a Jar: Food

Dec28

Christmas Food

I mentioned last week that we were going to make Kale & Apple Soup for my mom. It turned out delicious!

We made the following changes:

We started with butter and browned it, then sauteed some mushrooms (baby bellas) in that.

We toasted some cumin, fennel, allspice, and cloves (4 berries, 2 cloves, 1 teas fennel, 1 teas cumin) whole, then ground that up and added it to the butter.

After blending the soup and dividing it between 2 quart mason jars, we sliced a sunchoke and 2 carrots on the bias and sauteed them until they were tender and had some color, then used those as a topping.

Delicious and, well not vegan, def. vegetarian! And using up kale and apples from our garden!

That was Mom; for Capriox & Mr. Cap and a whole passel of co-workers we made Alton Brown’s Hot Cocoa Mix. Like most of these things, good ingredients are key, so we used a nice dark cocoa powder. Following suggestions from other people, we ran everything through the food processor for a bit to get the milk powder down to a much finer consistency, and, because we prefer our cocoa to taste like chocolate and not sugar, we halved the sugar (& skipped the cayenne). We put that in a mason jar, too, quart for Cap and pints/half pints for co-workers, topped or sided with mini-marshmallows and wrapped up with a ribbon so I could tie on an instructions tag.

Mason jars make everything awesome. 🙂 And, strangely, I have a lot of canning supplies in my house…

Next up: seeing if I can turn the tiny mug cakes into a kit/jar mix.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1032584.html. You can comment here or there.