Project 75 degrees and other unimportant things

Yesterday was one of those dark, snowy days where you kind of felt like somehow December had sneaked into February. I didn't much care for it.

On the bright side, it is February (not December) and we're actually closer to March now than we are to the first day of February. Last week, Andy and I spent a few minutes rearranging the woodpile and realized we have more firewood than we thought. Some of the wood has been waiting patiently to be burned since summer 2010 and that means we're running out of time before the wood gets "punky" (i.e. rotting, wet, hard to burn and doesn't release much heat). Since we'll hopefully receive a fresh delivery of firewood next month, we've launched "Project 75 degrees" to use up all of the older firewood. If the temperature in the cabin falls below 75 degrees, that means it's time to throw another piece of wood in the stove! Throw on your surf shorts and flip-flops and come visit! ;)

I might as well say it here to hold myself accountable, but I've decided to give up chocolate for Lent. I haven't successfully given up anything for Lent since I was 18 and since I'm not Catholic, I'm hardly required to give anything up. But I kind of like the willpower challenge, as well as the reminder that we can live perfectly happy lives without certain luxuries in our lives. As a result, I've been drinking copious amounts of mint tea, in lieu of cocoa, to trick my palette into thinking I've had a treat. My cousin gave up beer for Lent and the two of us have never looked forward to Sundays so much in our lives.

This past week, I planned out six different meals to make for supper. I made a grand total of three of those meals. Not because we went out to eat or someone fell ill, but because we ended up with enough leftovers to last us the whole week from those three meals. This never happens.  Despite my best planning for leftovers, inevitably all leftovers get demolished for lunch (or breakfast if Andy was especially fond of it) before they can ever make their way to the dinner table the next night. We must be eating less because despite both and Andy and I feel like we're eating perfectly normal sized meals three times a day, our fridge has been overflowing with leftovers. Apparently we have become the people who say, "Oh, just a little piece."
 

Read more ...

I Pinned It, I Did It: Crock Pot Honey Sesame Chicken

One of the downsides of living in the woods is that you're a long, long ways from takeout food. Growing up "in town" we had one option for takeout - pizza from the local (and kind of infamous) pizza joint. Since my family considered this pizza overpriced tourist fare, we inevitably made our own pizza rather than ordering out. Now that I live a good hour away from town, dining options are even more limited. Sure, there are a couple restaurants in the woods, but with Andy and I penny-pinching to the max this summer, if we have a craving for a certain restaurant food, we try to recreate it at home.

I've been working for a while to recreate my Chinese takeout favorites, a love that harkens back to my college days. Although my friend and I always hit up the Chinese buffet whenever I visit her in the Cities, do we even want to know what ingredients they use at the buffet?! Making the dishes at home allows me to enjoy them with a slightly less guilty dietary conscience. But it's not easy to find recipes that hits all of the notes necessary to really make my Chinese takeout chimes ring. To date, I've found a good (although unconventional) sweet and sour sauce to use in chicken stirfry and a great recipe for beef and broccoli that I actually make with venison.   

When I saw the pin for Crock Pot Honey Sesame Chicken on Pinterest, I knew I had to try it. It looks pretty tempting, doesn't it?

Source: chef-in-training.com via Courtney on Pinterest

So tempting in fact, that Andy actually called me from work on Monday to remind me to start it.

I wasn't sure if the directions were written for older and new crockpots (the highs and lows can be different temperatures on crockpots, depending on when they were manufactured), but I discovered my crockpot played well with the directions. My chicken was "just done" after two hours in the crockpot at high, just like the directions said it would be. Good to know.

I love the (grease-laden) crispy green beans they always serve at Chinese buffets, so I served some homegrown, steamed green beans on the side. Not exactly the same thing, but a much healthier alternative. Here's what our Chinese take-out ended up looking like. (Forgive the bad lighting.) 

The verdict on dinner? It was fine.

The chicken was certainly moist and tender, but the sauce needed something else if it was to move into the "this is so good" file. The sauce was sweet and salty, but with an odd aftertaste. Kind of like all the ingredients in the sauce didn't play that well together, especially after simmering together at low heat in a crock pot for a few hours.

The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of ketchup, which I questioned from the get-go. Maybe the ketchup was there for tang, but it only seemed to add a strange sweetness. Andy recommended using less honey the next time I make it (which, honestly, I'm not sure I will), but I think I'd stick with the same amount of honey and instead add some vinegar or lemon juice to cut the sweet and give the sauce some more complexity. Instead of ketchup, I might opt for some plain ol' tomato sauce.

So there you have it. A perfectly fine dinner brought to you by Pinterest. But not one I would consider "company fare" or one that I would even make again without a few tweaks here and there so it better suits our tastebuds. Operation Chinese Takeout is still a work in progress. 

Have you had success with your Pinterest projects?Do you have a favorite "takeout" recipe that you make at home?
 

Read more ...

Foods I Don't Get

Andy grilled up some venison steak last night. They came off the grill beautiful: juicy with charred grill marks and smothered with homemade BBQ sauce (compliments of Mel's Kitchen Cafe.)  We served them up with a side of  roasted Yukon gold potatoes and steamed broccoli. What's not to love?

But halfway through this very American meal, Andy looked over to find me dutifully, but not very enthusiastically gnawing my way through my steak. "You don't have to eat it if you don't like it," he said. So I sawed off one more bite of steak and gave the rest to him. 

As much as I appreciate Andy's woodsmanly ways that filled our chest freezer with venison last fall, I really don't care for venison steak. I mean, I love it in stew, in pasties, in sausage, in stir fry, in just about anything. And I feel that way about about all meat. If it's part of recipe, great! But a piece of meat plunked down on my plate as the main dish? Meh.

I'm not a terribly picky eater (although Andy probably disagrees . . . I do get turned off by food's texture on occasion), but there are a handful of foods that make me feel like Sam I Am of Dr. Seuss fame:

"I do not like them in a box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I will not eat them in a house.
I do not like them with a mouse.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them ANYWHERE!"

 

1) Dark chocolate

I want my chocolate smooth and creamy. If I wanted bitter chocolate flavor, I'd just stick a spoon into my baking cocoa. And no, washing that spoonful of cocoa down with some milk is not an acceptable alternative to milk chocolate.

2) Cake balls/pops

I like cake just fine, but it doesn't seem to be my go-to dessert.(That would be ice cream and/or pie, apparently.) Still, while I do enjoy a nice cupcake or slice of homemade cake, I have a low tolerance for boxed cake mixes and I despise canned frosting. So who's brilliant idea was it to take a box cake, mix it with a can of frosting, then dip it in chocolate? Cake balls look so pretty and they taste so horrible. Holy preservatives!  

3) Beets

I have a deep appreciation for vegetables. But when it comes to the beet, well, I might as well just go get a clod of dirt and gnaw on that because the "earthy" goodness of beets is spoiled on me.

4) Macaroni and cheese

There was a time, a long, long time ago, when I used to eat macaroni and cheese . . . a lot. And then, I hit my tipping point and suddenly, I could not stomach it . . . at all. It's probably been 15 years since I had my last bite of mac and cheese and while I do think I could choke some down if it was the last food on Earth, I still avoid it like the plague. And no, I don't mean just Kraft Dinner. I mean all the Mac and Cheese.

5) Shrimp 

That smell! That texture! I have tried shrimp many times, prepared many different ways and it still kind of revolts me. The other day I was listening to NPR's The Splendid Table and heard the host, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, say that everyone likes shrimp. The result? I no longer trust anything Lynne Rossetto Kasper tells me.

What foods don't you get? 

 

Read more ...

A Visit from the Easter Bunny

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter/Passover holiday this weekend. I spent all weekend worrying about meringue and as a result, I'm having some difficulty adjusting to the real-world projects, concerns, and tasks that come with Mondays. (Sadly, I have yet to make a living wage worrying about if the relative humidity will be too high for meringue to set properly.) 

For the record, the lemon meringue pie was a success and didn't warrant all the worry I threw at it. My meringue had a teensy bit of shrinkage and just a touch of weeping on the top. If you're ever wanting to tackle a lemon meringue pie, there's a fantastic tutorial over at the Not So Humble Pie blog that's definitely worth checking out.

Other than (literally) whipping up the pie, I spent the Easter holiday going for a long walk with my parents at the nearby nature center, then sitting down to a delicious Easter feast prepared by my mom, Andy's mom and yours truly. Because I'm a bad blogger, I didn't take any pictures and since everything was devoured with great enthusiasm, there weren't even leftovers to photograph. (Well, there were, but I ate them.) It was a lovely day. 

The Easter bunny made a surprise visit at the cabin.  This picture doesn't do it justice, but my Easter "basket" is made out of recycled candy wrappers. Not sure if it's an Ecoist, Nahui Ollin or what, kind of bag - the Easter bunny snipped off its tag -- but I'm pretty pumped about it since my current tote bag's handles are turning into a frayed mess.

The bag was filled with all sorts of good stuff: a spring-y scarf, lovely soap, chocolate, and this little lady to join my springtime decorations:

The Easter bunny also brought a TracPhone which will be put to good use during my upcoming travels since I've been without a cell phone contract for nearly a year now.  Don't worry friends, I'm back in the 21st century now . . . sort of.

I woke up to find a dusting of snow on the ground. I thought for sure it would be gone by this afternoon, but it's still coming down. I'm so . . . enthused.

These guys don't seem to be minding the snowfall.I have peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and an assortment of flowers all poking up now. I'll do a second planting at the end of the week.

I'm trying to focus this week and get some extra work done, since the traditional "end of the winter" travels are nigh. I had a mini freak-out this morning when I realized I'm just over a month away from going back to work full time again. On the bright side, that means the Ireland trip is just a year away.  Time to get a fare alert set up on Kayak. . . .

Hope you're having a happy Easter Monday. How did you celebrate this weekend? Who has spring travel plans?

 

Read more ...

Summer Stockpiling - Plus Making Dried Beans in a Crockpot Tutorial

When I moved away from home, I realized there are a few of basic grocery items that I'm not used to buying. My family has a definite "homemade" mentality, and when I was growing up, pizzas and lasagnas weren't pulled out of the freezer or ordered; they were made from scratch. Store-bought bread was an oddity in our house and we never, ever bought jarred spaghetti sauce. It was a sad day indeed if we ran out of homemade jam and had to buy a jar of strawberry preserves, or heavens help us, grape jelly. To this day, grape jelly still tastes like sadness to me.

Now that I'm on my own, I find I also lean towards making things from scratch. It's cheaper. It tastes better. It's more satisfying. And let's be honest, when I work from home like I do the majority of the year, it's pretty easy for me to live a "made from scratch" life.

When I'm home all day, I just don't find it very time consuming to make things from scratch. Homemade bread may require 3+ hours of time, but it doesn't require my undivided attention that whole time. It's easy enough to mix up the dough and leave it to rise to rise while I go do something else, then return to shape loaves, leave again to do whatever, pop the bread in the oven and go do something else while the bread bakes. If I'm smart about it, I can get a good 2 hours of work done during the whole bread baking process. I make my marinara sauce by throwing all the ingredients in a crockpot and let it burble away for 4-5 hours for a total hands-on time of 30 minutes. In fact, I use the crockpot as shortcut for lots of "made from scratch" stuff.

If I'm making this all sound like a snap, let me assure you that it all goes to hell in a hand basket when summer comes around. By mid-August, between working full time and berry picking, I pretty much give up on making things from scratch and I'm buying bread and spaghetti sauce along with everyone else. So every spring I come up with this great idea that I'm actually going stockpile the ingredients I like to make myself in the freezer and have enough to last through the busy summer season.  Honestly, I've never managed to pull this off, but I persist in thinking it's a really good idea.

One ingredient I prefer to prepare at home are beans. It's about half as expensive to make your own cooked beans from dried beans, rather buying cooked and canned beans. You can also better control how much sodium's in your bean recipes by making your own beans. And you can cook up large batches, which saves me the trouble of having to buy canned beans nearly every week. (We eat a lot of beans.)

The other day we were running low on frozen beans, so I cooked up a batch each of kidney, pinto, and garbanzo beans over the course of three days. Here's a pictorial guide to the last batch, the garbanzos.

Take your bag of approximately 3-4 pounds of garbanzos (I purchase my dried beans at the local co-op), dump into a colander and rinse with cold water. Pick through the beans and discard any rocks or broken beans. Dump the beans into your crockpot and cover with about four inches of cold water. Cover and place in the fridge overnight. 

The next morning your beans will have doubled in size. Dump them into a colander, than back into the crockpot and cover with fresh cold water. I usually have the water covering the beans by about an inch at this point.

 

Turn your crockpot on high and walk away. I put an old towel around the base of the crockpot to soak up the water that will inevitably boil over. Be warned, bean water does not smell great, so you'll want to wash that towel that in timely manner. (Lesson learned.)

Check on your beans after about 4 hours. I find it takes most beans between 4-5 hours to reach desired tenderness using this method. It's okay to turn off the crockpot a little before the beans are as tender as you'd like. Like pasta, the beans will cook as they cool in the colander.

Pour into a colander (or two) and cool. Divvy up into 1 3/4 cup portions in freezer bags. Throw in the freezer. Now you have bagged and frozen equivalents of canned beans for half the price!

You can thaw out the beans in the fridge before you use them, but honestly, I'm never that organized and usually just throw them in frozen into whatever recipe I'm making and increase the cooking time a bit. Remember, these aren't salted, so you may have to add extra salt to your recipe.

Now I've got a good summer stockpile of beans, but there's plenty of bread baking and sauce making if I'm really going to make it through the summer . . .

 

Read more ...

Eggnog Pancakes: A Tutorial

Things are feeling a little more festive around here lately. Still no tree or decorations up, but after Andy and I spent a good portion of yesterday reclaiming the kitchen, living room, and bathroom from the ever encroaching clutter and filth, I'm actually able to envision how a tree just might fit into the cabin.

I realized one reason it's been hard to think of Christmas as being just around the corner is the fact that we've been firmly rooted in "deer season" for so very long now. On Thursday night, we finally finished making venison sausage - a double batch of chorizo and like a quadruple batch of wild rice sausage, which I think is this year's winner in the sausage taste test. Now that the chest freezer is filled with 60+ lbs of processed venison, I can officially take off my butcher hat and pull on my Santa hat.

So we're making little steps towards the holiday season. One giant leap towards downright festiveness came when I made a batch of these yesterday morning:

That's right, eggnog pancakes. Mmmm, noggy goodness. I've mentioned these pancakes before, back in the blog's infancy, but good things are worth repeating and this time I'm actually going to show you how to make them.

Before you all go eggnog hating on me, let me say,  I'm not a huge eggnog fan either. A small glass of it once a year is plenty for me. However, I really enjoy the faint eggnogy, nutmegy flavor the eggnog gives these pancakes. Of course, adding eggnog to pancakes makes these probably the most ridiculously fattening holiday treat you could cook up. (But see, I used light eggnog - health food!)

Eggnog Pancakes

1 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 egg
3/4 cup eggnog (you can use light)
1/4 - 1/2 cup milk
3 Tbsp melted butter

Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together egg, eggnog, 1/4 cup milk, and butter. Combine dry and wet ingredients until just blended. Be carefully not to overmix: some lumps may remain- don't worry about them!  If batter seems too thick, add more milk until desired consistency is achieved. (I prefer my pancakes quite thin, so I end up adding the whole 1/2 cup of milk.) Drop batter in large spoonfuls on heated, grease griddle. Cook until bubbles form and bottom is golden brown, then flip. Cook on other side until golden brown. Serve warm with real maple syrup. Merry Christmas! 

Read more ...

Murderous Good Fun

As seems to be the norm anymore, we spent the weekend away from the cabin. On Friday morning, we all schlepped south to the metro. Andy had family gatherings to attend. I had a murder planned for Saturday night.

Since college graduation (which she did a year ahead of schedule because she's obnoxious like that), my friend Sarah's been working some pretty crazy hours as a public accountant. We're talking 70-80 hour work weeks on average and if that's not cause enough to go mildly homicidal, I'm not sure what is. We all know the true test of friendship, right? A friend helps you move. A good friend helps you move a body.

But back in April, right before we took on the Windy City together, Sarah got a new job, one with "I can still lead a human life" hours. So in celebration of all sorts of things - birthdays, friends and time to enjoy both - Sarah decided to throw a murder mystery dinner party before the holidays really set in.

When I've tried to explain what a "mystery in a box" dinner party was over the last couple months, I've been greeted with a lot of blank stares.  For whatever reason, despite never having attended such a party, I was familiar with the concept. Too much time spent reading mail-order catalogs as a child, I guess. If you're not familiar, the basic premise is that all the dinner guests play characters who have all been at the scene of murder which happened right before the game begins. All the characters have a motive for killing the imaginary murder victim, but only one character's actually committed the crime. Over the course of the dinner, clues are revealed until finally the (predetermined) murderer is discovered. It's like a live action game of Clue.

If you've seen Sarah's house, you know she has a bit of a passion for Asian decor. Naturally, she selected a murder mystery set in 1910 Hong Kong.  This was a great idea for several reasons. It requires very little decoration other than popping together and stringing some paper lanterns. Also, Chinese food is easy to produce in mass quantities. It did however mean that we - Sarah, her high school friend Kristen, and I - spent all of Saturday morning constructing a kimono for Sarah. (We mixed and matched Asian cultures a bit - the night ended with a cake shaped like sushi which another friend brought and was delicious.)

Two signs a party's bound to succeed? Sake and drink umbrellas.

Dinner table set for twelve guests.

A break between rounds.

The happy hostesses.

I found my dress on etsy. It's kimono inspired, but in no way Hong Kong 1910 - more Thailand 2011, I'd say. But hey, if I'm going to shell out my hard-earned money, it's going to be on something I'm going to wear again. I know Sarah feels the same way. Pretty sure she's going to be a geisha for like the next ten Halloweens.

In the end, I wasn't the actual character who committed the murder (whew!) and a pretty fantastic time was had by all. All our prep work in the kitchen in the early afternoon really paid off when it came to get the dinner courses out and although no one took the game to seriously (case in point, one of the guys did the entire game in a German accent when a Chinese accent alluded him) everyone played along and enjoyed the ridiculousness of it all. Murder's never been so fun. 

Read more ...

A day for community

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! May your turkey (or tofurkey, if that's how you roll) be plentiful and your tables and counter tops overflow with pies, rolls, potatoes, sweet potatoes, dressing, veggies, and whatever other starchy goodness your family and friends serve up as part of your annual T-day feast.

Currently, I'm hunkered down at Andy's mom's house, watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade (that is to say, I'm watching commercials and commentators, there's very little parading going on) on mute and a special "Thankfulness" edition of a local radio program. Yesterday I baked two pumpkin pies and spent a bit of the afternoon at the church doing prep work for the community Thanksgiving dinner my mother coordinates every year.

Pretty much since we moved back to my mom's hometown when I was in first grade, we've spent Thanksgiving Day at church at the annual community Thanksgiving dnner. When I was in middle school, my mom started to coordinate the dinner (today marks the dinner's 38th year) and since then, she's only taken one year off. Our Thanksgivings aren't spent in a family living room watching football. Instead, they're spent in a steamy church kitchen making mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, et al for 100+ people.

The dinner is often confused with being a charity effort, but that isn't the case at all. It's a community dinner. It's a free dinner option for anyone, regardless of their political, religious, or socioeconomic standing who doesn't want  the hassle of making the dinner themselves.  So yes, there are people who come because they have nowhere else to go, but there are also entire extended families who choose to eat their Thanksgiving dinner in this setting. Delivery and pick-up meals are available for those with limited mobility and we also offer rides to those who want to attend. The tag line for the dinner is "No charge, no sermon."  

This community seems not that far from the original (albeit probably mostly mythical) idea of the first Thanksgiving. That is, everyone coming together and bringing something to offer everyone else. However, in 2011, instead of saying, "You bring the squash, I'll bring the corn" it's more like, "you bring the Cool-Whip, I'll bring the (frozen) corn." Every single ingredient for the dinner is donated and the labor that prepares the meal is completely voluntary.

Our church also houses the county's food shelf and my mom was telling me yesterday how awkward she felt earlier in the week when she was in the church basement setting things up and a Native man came in to pick up food to bring up to the local reservation.While we all know that happy story of cooperation between the pilgrims and the American Indian that we base this holiday around is hardly the whole story, as the man left, he called out "Have a nice holiday!" This morning, a member of the local band of Ojibwe was on the radio, explaining how he feels about the holiday. "We like it," he said. "You don't have to go to work. There's lots of foods. It's an opportunity to say 'thanks.'"

So regardless of how Thankgiving really began, we do seem to agree on what today's all about: coming together, celebrating more than enough to go around, and saying "thank you."

Read more ...

Fall's Fruit: Apples

I've been noticing a lot of posts popping up on the blogosphere lately about apples and what to do with them after picking a bushel or so of them.

There's no apple tree on the cabin property and honestly, I'm not sure if there is an apple tree on the Gunflint Trail; I suppose they constitute bear bait.

Growing up in my great-grandparents' house, we had three apple trees in the backyard, all in the "winter" of their life. For years we gathered loads of apples from the yellow transparent apple tree and turned out pies, applesauce, apple butter, and crisps. But after sustaining considerable bear damage, the trees finally kicked it and my parents planted two new apple trees the spring I graduated from high school. This year, eight years after the seedlings went in the ground, my parents' apple trees produced enough apples for a single apple crisp.

While I have fond memories of peeling apples and rolling out pie crusts, I wasn't expecting to join in the annual apple harvest this year. But Andy's mother's neighbor has a well-established apple tree that they apparently don't use and I was more than happy to take some apples off their hands.

I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite uses for apples in this post, besides apple pie. 

(Why is it that I can only ever get a picture snapped of mostly eaten pie?) I just used Joy of Cooking's apple pie filling recipe. The crust recipe is a secret. ;)

What with my new water bath canner and all, I knew I wanted to make a big batch of applesauce with the apples I scored this year. While some people (ahem, Andy) may say I eat like a kindergartener, to me applesauce is the ultimate comfort food.

Our family recipe for applesauce is pretty specific:
Fill a soup pot with apple slices. (At best guess, I'd say this is approximately 2 gallons of apple slices)
Add just enough water to keep the slices from sticking - start out with about a cup and add more water as necessary
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar.

Cook until soft, stirring occasionally. Puree if you like, but I prefer it chunky. Place hot applesauce into hot, sterilized canning jars. Process in water bath for 20 minutes. Makes approximate 3.5 quarts.

When I made applesauce earlier this fall, I rushed it along a little bit, which resulted in me using a high heat when cooking it and adding a lot of water. It still tastes homey, mildly sweet and delicious, but it's got some big chunks in it. If I were to do it, I'd probably simmer it for much longer over lower heat.

If I had more time (and apples) I'd have probably make a small batch of unsweetened apple sauce too for using in baking. I've made apple butter in the past and to be honest, I'm not over the moon about it. I guess I prefer berry-centric fruit spreads. Another favorite use for apples that are just about to turn is Magnolia Bakery's Apple Pecan Quick Bread.

May your baskets overflowth with apples this fall and may your home smell of cinnamon.

Read more ...

Guest Post: Simple Frozen Dessert: The Semi-Freddo

Note from Ada: This week I'm asking some of my bloggy friends to help fill the Of Woods and Words soundwaves. Today, Emily, a writer and blogger over at the DIY blog The Happy Home, helps us think summer  . . . and let's be honest, here in MN these chilly May days, we need all the help we can get when it comes to thinking warm, summery thoughts!


Summer is hitting most of the US right now, so many of us are in the market for easy frozen desserts. I bought the ice cream maker attachment to my KitchenAid last year, but it definitely cost an arm and a leg. It barely fits in my kitchen, too! Sometimes, I wish I'd saved my cash, especially now that I know how to make a semi-freddo.

If you don't want to spend the money on an ice cream maker, or if you don't have the room for the big, bulky, one-purpose machine, the semi-freddo a frozen dessert that can be a lifesaver in the heat.

Essentially, it's a frozen, flavored whipped cream. It just takes a bit of of creativity and a hand mixer to make an endless series of delicious desserts.

For my latest experiment, I made a mango-strawberry semi-freddo, adapted from a recipe from A Bird In The Kitchen.

2/3 cup sugar, plus 2tbsp additional for the strawberries
2/3 cup mango juice
3 egg yolks
1 cup strawberries, chopped
1 cup heavy cream

In a small saucepan, heat the mango juice and the sugar. Boil until sugar dissolves, and a simple syrup is made. Cool to room temperature.

Place your chopped strawberries in a bowl, and cover with two tablespoons of sugar. Put aside in the fridge.

In a metal bowl, whip your egg yolks until pale and are one and a half times the size.

Slowly pour in the room-temperature syrup into the egg yolks while beating.

In a separate metal bowl, whip the heavy cream until it holds stiff peaks.

Fold the yolk mixture and strawberries into the whipped cream.

Transfer the mixture to a freezer safe mold, and freeze for 8 hours, or overnight.

To serve, either scoop, or turn out of your mold and slice!

Semi-freddos are light, airy, sweet and cold. You can swap out the fruit flavors for absolutely anything, and even add chocolate if you want to. A basic semi-freddo is the perfect recipe to keep in your summer collection!

Read more ...

Guest Post: Book Club Friday Betsy-Style!

<center><a href="http://www.ofwoodsandwords.com" target="_OfWoodsandWords"><img src="http://i1125.photobucket.com/albums/l600/celinestar18/Booksicon-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Of Woods and Words"></a>

Note from Ada: This week I'm asking some of my bloggy friends to help fill the Of Woods and Words soundwaves. Last year, my dear friend Betsy from In the Past Lane, suggested I check out Made from Scratch, a book by Jean Zimmerman, after reading my post about baking bread. Instead, I grabbed Made from Scratch by Jenna Woginrich, which fueled my desire to have a backyard filled with vegetables, chickens, and bees and which I have no regretted reading one little bit. But to set the record straight, here's Betsy talking about the book I was supposed to read! 

Last fall, I meandered my way to the library of the small-town Minnesota university at which I work, for their annual book sale. Library book sales are a thing of beauty – there’s always some sort of treasure waiting to be picked up for ten cents. That day, I stumbled upon Made From Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth by Jean Zimmerman. The jacket appealed to me – hey, I like crafty things! I like knitting and baking and cooking! Why not?

I thought the book would be an “all girls together” celebration of all things domestic. In a sense, it was – but it was so much more. Zimmerman is an author who has made her name writing books about the challenges women face in the modern world. In this book, she looks backwards – all the way to Ancient Greece, where Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, was the symbol of the strength of housewives and hearth-keepers. She traces the history of domesticity all the way up to the late 19th century. At that time, home economics became A Thing. Instead of domestic arts being consider an art, they were turned into a science, homogenized and sanitized. Instead of making bread the way your mother taught you, you made bread the way your textbook explained to you, because it was healthier and cleaner and neater and my God, don’t you want your children to grow up clean and healthy and neat? This leads into the wild and crazy sixties and the women’s lib movement, which gave women more freedom to look outside the home for fulfillment, at the cost of degrading and vilifying the domestic arts.

These are hardly conjectures or speculation on Zimmerman’s part. She backs up her statements with solid research into historical artifacts and documents, along with her own experiences of growing up in the seventies and subsequent abandonment of homemaking. At the same time that she cites studies and anecdotal research that show us how the loss of domesticity has affected us as a culture. We flock to museums that show us how people used to live, with a nostalgia for how “simple” life was back then. The Food Network is one of the fastest-growing cable channels, yet many children have never tasted homemade bread. We refer to the feeling of “coming home” when something makes us feel whole and complete, yet we neglect the art of making a home. We thrive on fast-and-easy fixes – Easy Mac, Homestyle Bakes, food that fills us but doesn’t really satisfy our souls.

This book resonated with me in many ways. I’ve always had a nostalgia for the past, as evidenced by my hobby of living history (or as others refer to it, historical reenactment). I’m what you would call a crafter – I annex crafts like they are territory to be conquered, leaping from sewing to quilting to embroidery to knitting at a rate that makes my mother roll her eyes. A child of the eighties and nineties, I never learned to use a sewing machine until I sought it out myself; when I did, I felt that “coming home” feeling, of something that clicked and felt right.

I used to think I was born in the wrong century, that I should be ashamed that modern Betsy with a college degree would actually rather bake cookies and knit a sweater. Zimmerman’s book showed me that there were centuries of homemaking traditions alive and well today. After reading the book, I was inspired to learn to bake with yeast, a task that had previously given me fits as it was too scientific. I learned to bake a cake from scratch, and when a friend served himself a third helping of my homemade old-fashioned strawberry shortcake, I beamed with pride. I came home.

The best part of it all is that Zimmerman offers no blame, points no fingers, offers no judgment. She freely admits that her own house is messy, she rarely has enough time for everything, and her kids do eat Poptarts for breakfast. As she states, “The only way forward is for us as a society to relearn to value work in the home without falling into reactionary traps about ‘proper’ roles for men and women”. Domesticity isn’t about being perfect, nor is it about stifling one’s potential. “We owe it to ourselves to live our lives fully,” Zimmerman insists, “to reap the pleasures that present themselves to us as humans.” And the most basic and fulfilling pleasure is coming home.

I’m certainly no messiah – I haven’t got further than baking kolaczys and bagels with yeast, and I still have an affinity for the occasional frozen pizza. But when that little domestic voice inside me starts begging me to knit or sew or bake a cake, I can satisfy it with pride, knowing that I’m doing my little part to keep the ancient hearth fires alive. Hestia would be proud.

Read more ...

The Lebkuchen Came!

On Monday I was sitting at the computer, working away, when I heard a knock at the door. I figured it must be the last Christmas present I'd ordered arrived, but when the FedEx lady handed over the box, it looked a little big for what I was expecting. I flipped over the box and found a pleasant surprise: lebkuchen from Paula over at Love is a Journey had arrived!

Lebkuchen is a traditional gingerbread-like cookie baked at Christmas time in Germany. When I opened the box, I found an assortment of charmingly packaged lebkuchen of all different shapes and size, which I tucked under the Christmas tree. 

"Hey what's this?" Andy asked, spying the assortment of goodies beneath the tree when he got home from work. He opened of the boxes. "Oh my gosh, did you see these?" he asked, his eyes growing wide. "HUGE chocolate cookies!"

Everything is so beautifully packaged that I'm hesitant to open anything. We are nibbling our way through the package of HUGE chocolate cookies and I have to admit that the package of Butterzeug (butter cookies) are nearly gone. (Hey, I like my butter.) I love holiday traditions, and I'm thrilled to be incorporating German Christmas traditions into Christmas 2010 at the cabin.

The closest I've ever come to being in Germany at Christmas is switching planes in Munich for a J-term trip to Italy back in 2006/07. But this isn't my first brush with lebkuchen. Back in high school, I worked on an online teen e-zine and one of my fellow editors lived in Germany. One Christmas, she sent all of the e-zine editors an assortment of German Christmas candies and included a small lebucken ornament in the parcel. There's been a piece of plasticized lebkuchen hanging on my Christmas trees for years!

While studying in Ireland in 2005, I had a chance to visit my fellow editor and experience Germany for a long weekend. Although this picture of snowy Heidelberg in the Rhine Valley was taken in March, this how I imagine a German Christmas: all snowy castles, brightly lit storefronts, lebkuchen and mulled wine. 

Thank you Paula for a taste of German Christmas. That first sweet bite of lebkuchen brought back equally sweet memories of Christmases and travels gone by.

Read more ...