Tag: Food

Here comes the sun

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This morning it was snowing and it was 19 degrees. Yeah, sure, snow is pretty. OK, fine, it’ll warm up as the day goes on.

Tell me another one.

Winter is not my favorite season. I’d much rather be basking in summer sunshine, listening to the birds and watering my sunflowers. But the earth needs a rest, at least in this hemisphere, and today I choose to view winter as a period of rejuvenation. I’m gathering strength for the coming season.

Like most of the over-indulgent, I’ve put on a few pounds over the holidays, slacked off on the exercise and generally lived the life of a pampered potato. Tras, too, has taken a good hard look at where his abs used to be and made a similar deduction. And like most of the over-indulgent, we have taken the coming of the new year to vow to turn over a new leaf, make a new plan, start afresh.

A shopping trip yesterday found me buying loads of fresh foods that I love. I’ve perused the recipe book for healthful dinners that I’ll be making from now on (NO MORE GRAVY) and I’ve taken inventory of spice rack and planned accordingly. The Wii Fit is singing its siren song and no longer will I ignore the treadmill in the basement.

These are my resolutions. Like the cheerful sunflower that again adorns the NouveauSoileau masthead, I’ve resolved to take a new and sunny view of life – and my waistline — and view it as an optimistic Project. I’m up for a challenge. I’m a healthy risk-taker. I know what needs to be done and by God I’m gonna do it.

I only ask one thing.

Talk me out of it.

A watched pot never explodes

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Frequently, as you know, I make my coffee the night before. That way, there is very little room for error in the uncaffeinated morning. But because I’m human, and therefore essentially lazy, most weekends I just leave it til morning and enjoy the evening with one less chore to do before bed.

This week I’ve been on weekend mode since Wednesday, since we’re off work for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Without having to get up and go to the office I lose track of days fast. Right now it could be Monday afternoon for all I know.

So whatever morning it is right now, I got up and staggered to the kitchen to make a hot delicious pot of coffee. The coffeemaker of choice was manufactured by Gevalia, one of approximately 23,471 of these things I’ve had over the last 10 years or so. If you’re unfamiliar with the company, you are apparently impervious to advertising. Sign up for their coffee-by-mail service and they’ll send you a free coffeemaker. Or thermos. Or coffee cups. Or some other enticing coffee-related thing.

The coffee is of course delicious, but about $95 a pound, and after a few months you come to your senses and cancel the whole thing. Only to repeat it six months later when they offer another coffeepot, somewhat more interesting than the other 19 you’ve got stacked around the house, so you sign up again.

Tras and I, separately, before marrying, were equally like moths drawn to the free coffeepot flame, so there are years and years of Gevalia-related experiences between us.

So anyway back to this morning. Rather than use the Krups coffemaker I’ve got on the bathroom sink for normal, barely sentient workday mornings, I staggered to the kitchen to make the coffee there. So as not to disturb the sleeping beauties still cuddled abed, you understand.

There I was met by the Current Gevalia Model. I greeted it with a mixture of deep longing and pure irritation. Last week, ya see, Tras made a pot of coffee in it, and the thing exploded all over the countertop, causing me to issue one of my rare Edicts, which was Tras You Are No Longer Allowed to Use this Coffeepot.

I don’t know what this thing does, but somehow in the brewing process, either the paper filter fails or some other mysterious basket-related trauma occurs, but the end result is you’ve got coffee, wet grounds and water all over your countertop — and no coffee.

Somewhat sooner rather than later, my edict came back and bit me in the ass, and whatever mysterious thing I either did or failed to do occurred and yesterday morning I was greeted with the same disaster all over the counter.

Not this morning, I vowed, sounding rather like a movie announcer.

In a world where the procurement of excellent morning coffee is just a dream — ONE WOMAN dares to achieve the Perfect Pot.

And so I stood, shivering violently in the predawn light (OK, it had been light for two hours) watching the damn thing to ensure it didn’t explode all over the place. Waiting for one misstep, one Juan Valdesian error that I alone could correct and cause happiness and caffeine to freely flow through my body this lovely Thursday morning, or whatever it is.

Of course, nothing. No explosion. No insurrections. No 1980s style action movie disaster to combat. I remain clueless as to what, exactly, causes these Gevalia pots to revolt — but only when no one is looking.

Perhaps one day — In a world where humanity has freed itself from the lure of free coffeemakers — One Woman will know.

A giant plate of awesome

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What’s that I saw outside my window pane this morning? Why, could it be SNOW? In December? In Kentucky? An event this momentous could only signal one of two things — either the coming apocalypse, or I should just put up my Christmas tree, for pete’s sake.

I guess I’ll go with #2 — but I intend to be prepared for #1 just in case.

So this afternoon my daughter, Claire, like any self-respecting 14- (soon to be 15)-year-old, was, as always, in the presence of one or more of her BFFs. Muhahaha, I say. More free labor for the festivities. So in honor of The First Snowfall of the Winter, I employed these two minions for the production and presentation of some tree-trimming worthy holiday oatmeal cookies.

But oatmeal, much as I love the stuff, by itself is rather tame. I consulted the cabinet. I found chocolate chips, butterscotch morsels and, be still my heart, Heath toffee chips.

I’m also a shade fanatic on the subject of flour, and frequently construct Belgian waffles and yeast breads in my bread machine with oat flour. So, I’ve got the stuff on hand. If you decide to make these, you can omit the oat flour and go solely with all-white wheat flour, but nobody’s gonna tell you that you just made a giant plate of awesome.

OK, so nobody told me that either, but when the first cookie sheet came out of the oven, I had never seen such open hungry mouths this side of a robin’s nest. I had the bad judgment to go start a load of laundry while they were cooling on the rack and came back to exactly no more cookies, apart from those still baking in the oven.

These I guarded with a flamethrower.Back — BACK I SAY! Keep your distance, family and friends, these cookies are for AFTER DINNER.

We rotated Free Help when Claire’s friend Aren left shortly before dinner (with a ziplock baggie with some cookie booty inside) and Christopher’s friend Nathan arrived. After dinner we did indeed consume said cookies and don’t they look luscious?

Shut up. I only ate one. OK, more than one. I didn’t eat three (at one time). I made them for the family. I’m good like that.

Right now, after dinner, there are about four or five of the beauties left. They’ll most likely be devoured sometime in the next couple of hours, while we’re putting up the tree(s) [I have two]. That’s a harrowing tale in itself; the main tree is 12 feet tall and takes around four hours to assemble.

Fortunately, as I said, I have minions, and as I write Christopher and Nathan are lugging the boxes containing the tree, ornaments, lights and other Christmas paraphernalia from the attic downstairs. Ah. I love minions.

Cue up the Christmas music. Put the treadmill on High Alert. I’m ready to start the holiday.

~ ~ ~

Wanna make the cookies? Here’s the recipe.

A Giant Plate of Awesome Oatmeal Cookies

3/4 cup margarine or butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup oat flour
1 tablespoon wheat germ
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup toffee chips
1/4 cup butterscotch morsels

In a mixing bowl beat margarine or butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add the all-purpose flour, the brown sugar, sugar, egg, baking powder, vanilla, and baking soda. Beat till thoroughly combined. Beat in oat flour and wheat germ. Stir in oats. Stir in candy pieces.

Drop by rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in a 375-degree oven 12 to 15 minutes or till edges are golden. Cool cookies on a wire rack. Makes about 48.

Sneaky eatie

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I like to cook. It’s not something I was born to; it’s more like Julie Powell, Miss “The Julie/Julia Project” who is now more famous than God. That is, it’s something that I found when I wasn’t really looking.

Christopher, my 12-year-old son who is currently stricken with The Dreaded Flu, isn’t around to comment this evening, quarantined as he is, but every night in the past oh six months or so when I’ve made something interesting, I’ve taken a photograph of it. Not tonight, however, and it’s a shame because this is the first time I’ve actually mustered up the energy to write about what I’ve cooked after I’ve gone through the arduous process of actually cooking it.

Christopher, or “Kristoff” as I like to call him. The poor Tamiflu-taking preteen.

He’s always giving me a hard time, this one, about taking pictures of food.

“WHY did you take a picture of the food,” he’ll ask, just as perplexed as he can be. Like, ‘why on God’s green earth did you waste valuable pixels on something as boring, unphotogenic and useless, photographically speaking, as FOOD.’

Not that he said that. But you could see it just oozing all over his face. Well, I’ll tell you why, Mr. Enthusiastic Eater of Mommy’s Cooking, I’m on the Internet and what we mamas do is talk about you rugrats, our sex lives and what we made for dinner.

Now see? Doesn’t that look good? And photographed nicely with plenty of natural light from yonder breakfast-nook window. It’s Chicken Bruschetta from Tasty Kitchen. I’ve submitted a coupla recipes there myself.

Doesn’t the fresh basil look nice, snipped from my own back yard?

At any rate, tonight I did a bit of on-the-fly cooking, such that Julie would never have attempted, wedded as she was to Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Hey I ain’t wedded to no one but Tras and if I wanna cook rogue, I do it.

Recipe Part A. Last weekend I had purchased some lovely onion buns. I probably buy them every two or three years; they’re delicious buttery yellow hamburger buns with scrumptious toasted oniony thingies on top. Oh it’s a good burger made with these babies.

Recipe Part B. I keep on hand, in the freezer, a vast quantity of frozen ground turkey; thank you Meijer’s. It’s appallingly cheap at the regular price, which I think is $1.69 a pound. Recently they ran it 10 for $10. So I use it exclusively for all my hamburger needs, which wax and wane as I make fizzled attempts to return to my natural, vegetarian state. Anyway, the ground turkey.

Recipe Part C. Squash. I love it. Tras loves it. The kids are sick of it. Heck, they never liked it much in the first place but me, I love to grill it. Grilled zucchini, grilled summer squash. And grilled eggplant. IT’S ALL GOOD. But along about June 23 of this year, I probably burned them out of it. I don’t care. I keep buying it.

Recipe: The Good Part. Here’s where I got devious and creative. I mashed the pound of ground turkey with an egg, a few bread crumbs, about a quarter cup of Kraft parm and my favorite spices: onion salt, ground pepper and Tony’s. It’s true. It’s. Good. On. Everything.

So I mash it all together, as I say, and then I am STRUCK. Struck by inspiration. I own a Cuisinart food processor. It turns anything into shredded nothing in two seconds flat. They won’t eat zucchini? Mu-friggin’ ha-ha-ha.

I do it. I shred that zucchini. I mix it into the turkey. I form patties. Down they go on the George Forman grill. Four minutes later, mon dieu! She is gorgeous and delicious, this turkey burger patty.

Then comes the devious part. The plating of the patty. The toasting of the bun. The application of the oh-so-desired Swiss cheese. The jauntily set bread-and-butter pickles. Poor Claire. She never knew what hit her.

When I got her plate back it was clean. Clean. She ate every ounce of her quarter-pound turkey burger, containing as it did, a quarter zucchini. It may be simple to you, but to me, it’s a victory to savor on par of the night I made “chicken” stir-fry. Ask my dear children how very very tender Mom makes her cubed chicken. Oh so delicious is that chicken<cough>tofu<cough>.

You never heard it from me.