Butterscotch Pralines (and LOST)

This week's SMS assignment was to make Butterscotch Pralines. I've never made candy before because (1) I had an unfortunate accident with hot sugar when I was in the fifth grade, and (2) Most candy recipes say to make them on a cool, dry day. I lived my entire life in the Deep South, and I now make my home in Virginia. We get about five cool, dry days per year. But I do remember reading that pralines were originally a french candy more akin to a brittle but when made in the warm, humid climate of New Orleans, they turn into a deliciously creamy and slightly grainy confection. So the warm-ish, damp weather today (also the day of the LOST finale!) could only help. I hoped.

Here we are coming up to a soft ball. Having never cooked with sugar before I was surprised how the temperature stayed low for a while, shot up to about 230, then hung around there for quite some time before finally going up to 238. I'm sure there is a scientific reason for this.
After the sugars (and other things) were properly cooked, I transferred it to my mixer bowl, added butterscotch chips, and let 'er rip.
Once it was creamy, I added the bits of pecan. I didn't get a picture of this stage because the candy was really wanting to set up, and I just went ahead and scooped it while I still could.
I haven't had one of the candies yet (they're setting even as I type), but I did lick the bowl, and let me tell you, these are really delicious. One thing I might do differently next time is toast the pecans, but honestly, these are pretty close to perfect as they are. Thanks to Tess of the Cookin' Chemist for picking such a nice recipe!

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln . . .

So, the idea for this week’s SMS was to make pumpkin bread pudding, selected by the lovely Carmen of Baking is my Zen. It sounded like a really lovely, lightly spicy and creamy dessert. There was a delicious-looking sauce. The pictures people put up early looked lovely. I got ready to bake today and realized: You know what’s hard to find in May?

Pumpkin.

So hard, in fact, that I looked through the fruit, vegetable, and baking aisles at WM three times before I gave up and regrouped. After some hemming and hawing and looking through both pantry and cookbooks, I decided on chocolate bread pudding with chocolate chips and dried cherries.

It all got off to an inauspicious start at WF, where they did not have brioche at all. (This is central Virginia, after all, not Paris.) I settled for a big loaf of challah, which I reckoned would be a nice substitute, what with the egginess and butteriness.

(Yes, the wise woman would have bought the pumpkin while she was at WF. I am clearly not that woman.)

Also, the cinnamon sticks were a bit spendy, especially considering I have enough ground cinnamon to last until I’m fifty. Ditto whole cloves. And vanilla beans. So when the canned pumpkin just did not show up, I took it as a sign.

What I ended up doing was following the approximate portions provided in How to Cook Everything (Bittman) with some of the techniques in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book. I toasted about 8 ounces of challah cubes.

Then I cooked together a mixture of milk and cream totaling three cups with a bit of butter the size of a walnut and two ounces of bittersweet chocolate. After the chocolate melted I set it aside to cool for a bit before whisking it into three beaten eggs.

I layered the bread cubes in a dish with a handful of chocolate chips and a handful of dried cherries. (I put a layer of bread on top of this too.)

Then I strained the chocolate custard into the dish and left it to soak while I did the dishes.

It went into a water bath, then the oven for about 45 minutes.
It was good! I think the dried cherries really made it. Bread pudding is never going to look like much (as John helpfully observed), which is probably why it's usually served with a sauce of some kind. Oh yeah, I didn't do the sauce either.

SO! Basically I just made whatever I darn well pleased and called it a SMS entry. I probably wouldn't have made bread pudding unprompted, though, so that's got to count for something, right?

The Harvest

So, this year I'm trying Dominion Harvest, a local-food delivery service. You pay some money, they source and deliver food (mostly veggies, but also fruit, eggs, cheese, and herbs) right to your door. Mine arrived last night, and I'm pleased with it -- haven't had a chance to cook with it yet, but I did just have some feta as a little snack.


Look at the arty effect! There's lots of lettuce, some arugula, asparagus, eggs, sweet potatoes, green onions, strawberries, blackberry jam, parsley, and the aforementioned cheese. I'm really looking forward to the arugula, which I've never cooked with before. The company provided a suggested strawberry and arugula salad, which I think I'll try. I'm also hearing good things about arugula pesto. Maybe this weekend?

Peanut Butter Truffles!

I'm always wanting motivation to bake more, so I joined a baking/blogging challenge: Sweet Melissa Sundays. The idea is to prepare a tasty treat from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book and share experiences (and drool-worthy photos) about it. My first entry (which I really did do on Sunday, just didn't have time to blog about it then) was Peanut Butter Truffles, hosted by the lovely Mara of Love Your Mother Earth.

Here are all the wonderful components of the truffle: peanut butter and cream heating on the stove, chocolate waiting to be chopped, and butter. Later on I'll chop up some peanuts.

I've poured the hot cream over the chocolate. Doesn't look too promising.
But after sitting around for a few minutes, it whisks to a lovely smooth consistency. I then beat in the butter. It would have melted more quickly had it not been practically frozen when I put it in.

The rich, smooth mixture chilled in the fridge while we watched a few episodes of Battlestar Galactica and ate some pizza. (Also homemade because that's how I roll.) I couldn't take a picture while I was scooping and rolling the chocolate into little peanut-covered balls -- my hands got too messy for camera operations -- but don't they look nice sitting in the refrigerator?
They're delicious and rich. I do wish there was more of a peanut butter flavor, and also that I'd bought more heavily salted peanuts. And maybe chopped them a little finer. I took the good advice of several other folks and made half a batch, which translated into about 30 truffles.

Lots of fun!

A few things I've cooked, in no particular order:

Ice Cream in the KitchenAid Ice Cream Attachment. I've made several batches, and this was the easiest because it was not custard-based, so no cooking. I believe it included sour cream, sugar, lemon juice and zest. Recipe from Epicurious.

Fritatta. I make this once a week. At least.

Sesame noodles with tofu, which are just so delicious and a nice, light-but-filling thing for summer. This will return to the rotation soon.

No pictures!

It's been quite some time since I edited the blog, mainly due to a sad lack of picture uploading on my part, which I will try to remedy. It's not as if I haven't been taking pictures (mainly of my food) -- but I haven't found the patience needed to actually (1) transfer them to the camera, and (2) load them onto the blog. A blog without photos is a sad thing indeed.

However! It's been an interesting nine months since the last post! Most interestingly, I got married on July 3 and began the adventure of being a wife. So far, so good, as they say; it's tremendously nice to have a buddy beside me who's happy to change cat litter, shovel snow, and cheer me up. Actually, I do have a picture to share, taken with my brand-new iPhone on the day we bought a pair of them as honeymoon gifts to ourselves. What a cutie!

Upon being married, I moved to lovely Carytown, Richmond's trendy/bohemian neighborhood. I also acquired John's two cats, bringing the total count to three. Three cats in a smallish apartment did not make for good times at first, but they reluctantly tolerate each other now, for the most part. Still lots of hissing!

Before and After

Welcome to my newest cousin, Celie Annalin!

American History 101

True quotations from a caller today:

"He came over on the Mayflower with Christopher Columbus."

"It all goes back to Rome."

"There was a Civil War and they was a Continental War.  I reckon George Washington was in the Continental War."

"Loretta Lynn was in the middle of this.  The Carter family, too."

More on the race . . .

So, by the numbers: I came in 7,109 of 26,242 overall finishers (about the top 25%); 391 of 2062 in my age group (about the top 20%); ran the second half very slightly faster than the first half (19 seconds faster, to be precise -- this is a good thing); and had a 9:09 pace overall (faster than my training pace).

May I say that I was really quite pleased with myself?

More generally, it was a great day to run. Everything went perfectly for me as far as getting there, parking near the start (my little secret!), watching the elite runners sprint off, and laughing at the costumed runners. The speedo-ed "Michael Phelps" certainly encouraged me to get past him, and some people I knew won first in the group contest with a great Ms. Pac-Man theme. The weather was perfect. The waves were nicely timed, so there weren't too many slow people to dodge. There were bands and spectators all along the course, and then there is the course itself, which is just one of those perfectly lovely places that makes me glad to live in Richmond.

Pictures later if I buy them!

56:55!

That, my friends, is my best-ever 10K time . . . all on very slack training, thank you very much.  The original plan was that this would be the year I really tried - the goal was a sub-55.  But what with the traveling to Alabama, getting sick, getting engaged, snow, and it just being too darn cold to get out of bed in the morning, I sort of didn't get started until two weeks ago.  My long run (on a treadmill) was a pathetic 3 miles.

The only theory I have was that the caffeinated Jelly Bellies I scarfed down before the race helped, as did predicting my time optimistically so I wasn't stuck running around slowpokes.  Anyway, yay me!  I'll have a more thorough analysis of splits, places, and all that later.

Got a shovel?

Oh, holy cow.  Will you just look at all the snow?  I'd guess about six inches, and it's still falling.  (It would appear to be the last gasp, though, according to weather.com.)  I've got some still-painful frostbitten fingertips and lots of lovely pictures.  I'm going to spend the rest of the day watching movies and baking cookies.  And hoping they cancel work tomorrow, because we really truly do not have a snow shovel, and how am I to get out of here?

Lucky 13!

All my readers know, but I wanted to make it official with a blog announcement as well as a gadget . . . John and I got engaged!  Ring pictures soon, I promise . . . Look, here it is!

A few words about the holidays

No, I haven't become one of those people who calls Christmas "the holidays" (which is disturbingly common, you know) but am referring to the Christmas-New Year's stretch. Which is two holidays, ergo, "the holidays."

Anyway, a few pictures, in no particular order. Two are in Baltimore, with random JS family members and their pets; two will be recognized by my faithful readers as being at Meme's house, or rather in her kitchen. We were all very tired on New Year's Eve, so we ate our chili and went to sleep without so much as a spoonful of ice cream (though I actually think she managed to get us to eat some of Bonnie's famous chocolate pie). The next morning I whipped up some tasty Morning Glory muffins . . . or rather reconstituted them from the mix I bought at Whole Foods. They were very tasty with apple butter.

Later that day a few Smiths came over bearing food - roast beef with assorted trimmings - and we had a lovely supper, after which we enjoyed the traditional New Year's Eve sundaes. Happy 2009 to everyone! It promises to be a terriffic year.

Chili Pouf

So, Christmas morning this year found me away from my normal traditions. The lovely Ginny and Craig made up for it, though, with all sorts of delights (babies, dogs, and a real Christmas tree!), not least of which was Eggy Pouf on Christmas morning. As I ate it, I thought it tasted both delicious and haintingly (ha! meant to type "hauntingly" but as a sort-of-Alabamian, haintingly works too) familiar. It was, it turned out, pretty much the same thing as the old Gilbert Christmas classic, Mexican Eggs, but with cheddar instead of pepper jack and bacon instead of chilies.

I was inspired, then, to make a pan of Mexican eggs for supper the other night. It's easy, tasty, and always pleases. We ate it with some nuked sugar snap peas.

Mexican Eggs

5 eggs, 1/4 cup flour, 8 oz. cottage cheese, 4 oz. canned diced chilies, 2 Tbs. melted butter, 1 tsp. baking powder, 2 cups chredded pepper jack cheese. [I wanted to use up the tail end of some white cheddar so I shredded that and made up the balance with pepper jack. Also, the food processor just goes through cheese so quickly you will not believe it. It's magic!]

Mix it all together and put it in a greased 9 inch pie pan. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes, turn the oven down to 350, and cook for another 20-25 minutes until golden and perfect.

Look!

Behold some of my delightful Christmas presents!  I've already watched the Dexter DVD (thanks to Kenny and an absurd amount of off-work time), and Lewis Agonistes is excellent so far - still in the biographical portion.  However, the prize this year goes to the camera, a gift from the lovely and talented JS . . . everyone can look forward to seeing more pictures on the blog in 2009!

Slightly disappointed . . .

53% Geek

This bodes well!

17

More Dolly Dodging, before I forget!

Our story continues . . . . So, after finding sustenance we went down to our cabin and waited for the ship to sail, which it did, around 4 p.m. It was great fun to watch Miami ease away. Shortly thereafter we went up top - well, up a couple floors, anyway - for a lifeboat drill. It was at this point we discovered our cabin had only one lifejacket, a problem that was never rectified.

After standing around "listening" to instructions on what to do if we had to abandon ship . . . and I say "listening" because we were positioned near some kind of fan or vent that was blowing noisily and preventing our hearing anything at all . . . we sauntered back to the cabin and got ready for dinner.

Now, many cruises have assigned seating for their dinners, and this was no exception. I had great fears of being trapped with some overly-sincere, apple-cheeked, corn-fed Michael W. Smith devotees, but it turned out Charlotte and I had our own table, and per the rules of the cruise, would continue to have our own table through the entire vacation. Nice! We also had the same waiters, which made for a pleasing continuity. The formal dining room (the "Gold Olympian," I think) was very elaborate . . . lots of deep red velvet-looking banquettes, gilded staircases, etc. The sub-waiter, a small man from Indonesia, got our beverages and tempted us with bread. The main waiter, a Peruvian, told us about the specials and offered his recommendations.

Aside: The food on the ship, while not absolute top-drawer, was consistently tasty. In the main dining rooms there was a base menu ("Carnival Classics") composed of standard steaks, Cesar salads, etc., and there was a daily-changing list of specials as well. I particularly enjoyed a lentil soup, an Indian vegetarian plate, and fattoush. My very favorite thing to have for lunch was a bowl from the Mongolian barbeque line. I'm sure it was neither Mongolian not barbecue, but it was a very tasty bowlful of self-selected rice noodles and vegetables, wokked and sauced by one of the cooks, and served HOT!

Five Things I Like

No offense to people who post lists of pet peeves (I have a few of those, too!), but as part of my effort to be positive, here are five things that really please me:

1. My iPod, with all its lovely nano features:  video, audio, pictures, calendar, address book.  It has saved me from boredom and unwelcome talkers on many occasions.
2. Beautiful fall days like today:  Cool in the shade, warm in the sun.
3. Bacon.  Really, is there anything better?
4. Days with enough free time to get a little knitting done.
5. Purring cats - it's the best sound in the world.  If dogs could only learn how to purr, we wouldn't need cats at all.

The Good News . . .

 . . . is it's finally cool enough in the  mornings to run outside.

The bad news is that I'd forgotten how hard hills are.  (Just 5.5 miles today instead of the half-marathon-training-program-prescribed 7.)

But a bad day at Deep Run Park is better than a good day at the gym, even if Gold's does show ESPN.