Vanilla Icing

San Marzano

Hello.  I'm still here.  This week has been very busy and will get busier still.  Between yard work and errands, Rick and I have been getting ready for the Cheat Race which is a downriver kayaking race that Rick organizes and runs every year.  I help but don't do nearly as much as he does!  The race is tomorrow and then things should slow down around here.  This will be my third year helping out; here's 2007 and 2008.

But let's talk about something else today.

Look at this little guy.  He's a baby San Marzano tomato plant.  I've got a good many more too!

I have an 'interesting' story about how I got the seeds for these guys.

A few months ago, I decided if I was going to grow tomatoes this year I was going to grow the only ones that I like to use for sauce:  San Marzano Tomatoes.  It was a wise decision because a can of these imported tomatoes cost up to $5.00 and I thought if I can grow my own then perhaps--just maybe--I can grow enough for canning for the entire year?  Please?

I had no luck finding the seeds at any of the local nurseries and I turned to the Internet.  I found a place online that sells the imported canned tomatoes by the case AND the seeds.  The website was more than a little sketchy--it was downright suspicious!  I was hesitant to order online and I decided to call the number they had listed.

It was a strange number; it didn't seem at all like a telephone number that was in the U.S. but now that 1-800 numbers have branched out to other numbers I figured this was probably the same.  I called about 1 pm.   No one answered and I got a barely understandable recording.  They were closed, the heavily Italian accented voice informed me.  Ooops did I just call Italy?  I shuddered to think of the rates for that phone call.

I hung up the phone and poked around their website some more.  I found out that they were an import company located in New Jersey.  There was no reason they shouldn't be open!  Then, I started thinking of the Sopranos that Rick and I have just spent the last year watching the entire series watching and wondered if I had just phoned some Mafia front that wasn't really selling imported tomatoes and seeds at all. 

Suddenly the phone rang.  It was that number I had just called!  There was no way I was NOT going to answer a phone call from the Mafia.  It might make them even angrier!  Hesitatingly, I answered it.

'Hellooo?   Did you just call here?'  is what came over the line in accented English.

Agh!  It was the Mafia!  was all I could think.  Completely freaked out, I told the man why I had called.

And ordered the San Marzano tomato seeds.

And gave him my credit card information. 

And wondered if this was all a scam to get my credit card numbers.

And wished I still had my very Italian maiden name so that perhaps he wouldn't screw over 'one of his own.'

And then I waited and hoped for 10 days that mysterious charges wouldn't suddenly start appearing on my credit card.

They did not.

My San Marzano seeds arrived with a very  nice handwritten thank you note.  A few weeks later they were sprouting and now they are outside in my garden bed.   All of that silly concern for nothing!  If I haven't told you already, I'll tell you now.  I have a VERY overactive imagination.

I'm still watching my credit card statements.

If You Care...

...Don't buy cupcake papers from If You Care.

Not only are the papers ugly, a good many of them will NOT stick to the baked cupcake.  They will self-peel forcing you to do things like make Shoddy Blackout Cupcakes.

Rampantly Impatient

I'm always a little sad when I notice my tulips opening their petals as wide as they can go.  This means that I only have a little more time to enjoy them before they are gone until next spring.

But maybe it's a good thing this year.

 

I have all these guys waiting their turn in the garden.   Rampantly impatient.

 And there are more waiting in the wings.  Lots more.

Sneaky Spring

I thought to sit outside today and have brunch in the sunshine.  The sky was so blue and the sun was taking advantage of the budding trees to brighten every nook and cranny.  How could I resist?

Besides, I had fresh baked, still warm ciabatta.

It had plenty of holes in its crumb...just like a good ciabatta should.   But there was a problem.  No sooner did I sit down did I realize how chill the air was despite the valiant efforts of the sun.  My brunch was rapidly cooling!

In I went.  But cool weather that sends one inside isn't a bad thing when you have fresh ciabatta and fried eggs to eat for brunch.  It doesn't get much simpler than this but it's delicious!

Guilty pleasure in book form helps shake off the chill as well.  Did you know that?

Thoughts on Cookie Jars

Last night I made a cookie just for me.  Vanilla Biscotti.  Wouldn't you know that it turns out everyone liked them and I had a pile of children dunking them in milk and eating them?  This is great news because now it means I won't be working my way through the cookie jar all by myself with people cheering me on to the bottom so that it could be refilled with something else.  Now it will be quite the task to make sure I get my fill of them before they disappear!

Every time I make biscotti I long for one of those Italian biscotti jars.  Do you know the type I mean?  They are expensive--for a cookie jar!--here in the U.S. and it makes me wonder if they really only exist for us silly Americans to feel good.  Surely if they do exist in Italy no one over there is paying $150 for a cookie jar.  It makes me wonder:  is there some company selling a $15-$25 cookie jar that says 'Cookies' on it in some other country and marking it up as high as they can in order to make outrageous profit on some poor man or woman making Chocolate Chip Cookies who wants to feel good about their 'American Cookies?'

Well Done Grasshopper?

I think not.

It's possible that my camera may have been cursed.  I cannot seem to get a decent picture of anything no matter how many pictures I snap.  Take this for example:

Any clue what it is?  Probably not.  The focus is on the back of the picture when it should be on the front.  I thought it was focusing on the front and considering I took fourteenhundreedbazillionandone shots of this dessert surely one of them should have had the focus on the front.

Nope.  Not a single one.   Still trying to guess what it is?  It's cake.  Grasshopper Fudge Cake.  About a year or so ago while standing in line at the grocery store, I caved and bought one of those 75 ideas to do with cake mix pamphlets that ring the entrance to the cashier's domain.  Hey, it was a long line--did you really think I was going to pick up the Star magazine's Celeb's Butt's and Whose Got the Best and Worst when there was something to do with baking nearby?

I bought the cake mix pamphlet solely for this cake and just over a year later finally got around to making it.  It's tastes light and cool and is a good choice for a summer dessert.  Or if you are like me and are vainly wishing for warmer weather you might think you and your oven can trick the seasons.

Grasshopper Fudge Cake
                 by Betty Crocker

1 box white cake mix (prepared as instructed on box with oil, water and egg whites)
2 teaspoons mint extract
liquid greed food color
2 16 oz jars of hot fudge (I only used 1 jar and it was sufficient)
1 8 oz container of frozen whipped topping, thawed
Additional chocolate or Andes candies, chopped for topping (optional)

1.  Heat the oven to 350 and spray the bottom only of a 9 by 13 pan.

2.  Make the cake as directed on the box but add 1.5 teaspoons of the mint extract to the mix.  Reserve 1 cup of the batter and tint it light green with 3 drops of food color.  Set aside.  Pour white batter into pan.

3.  Drop green batter into small puddles on top of the white batter.  Swirl the green and white batters together.

4.  Bake the cake 28-32 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Run a knife along the edges of the cake to loosen the sides and cool 1 hour.

5.  Spread the fudge topping over the cake.  Add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of mint extract and 9 drops of green food color to the whipped topping.  Mix well.  Carefully spread the whipped topping over the fudge.  Garnish with candies if desired.  Store well covered in the refrigerator.

Weekend. Yawn!

It's been one of those weekends.  You know the type.  The type that nothing much seems to go on but you're busy, busy, busy and at the end of it there's a Monday morning.  On that Monday morning as you try to pry open your eyes and re-enter the world you find that your whole body is tired and would rather stay in bed.  Then, the only thing that gets you out of bed is annoyance that you are laying in bed wasting time so you get up and stagger to the kitchen and make that cup of liquid energy.

Tea.  Not quite as strong as coffee but it's much faster to make.  It's not Tazo Awake but it's an English breakfast tea and it's helping.   Helping me to do what?  Wake up enough to make a cup of coffee of course!

I'll be ready to start the week in about 30 minutes.  I promise.

Finally Friday

It is not often that I am relieved that the weekend is here but this time I am very much looking forward to the warm, wonderful weekend our weather forecasters are promising! 

The cookie jar has been replenished and I am ready for the weekend!

Bagel Blues

I have the most adorable video of Maia making bagels.  Two of them in fact.  The first one is her kneading the dough and discussing the process and the second is her shaping the bagels and discussing the next few steps.

But--when I took the video I used my camera and not the video camera which wouldn't be a problem--except I filmed sideways.  Neither Rick nor I can correct this.  =(  But I did have a few pictures that I'll share since I can't get the videos to do what I want.

We will just jump right in after the dough has already been mixed and kneaded.

Maia cuts the dough into portions for shaping into bagels.  She loves using this tool to cut the dough because she knows she can tease me about using My Precious.

I'm starting to suspect that she sees dough as a type of big girl Play-Doh.  I enjoy watching her small capable hands shape the dough so confidently.

The next morning, I woke up early to bake Maia's bagels.  Bagels go in a water bath and then the oven and those are the only two parts of the whole bagel-making process I won't let her do--yet.  But soon, very soon.  I want both of my children to be sure of themselves in the kitchen long before they grow up.  And, I think because they so often see me in the kitchen cooking and baking for our family and are allowed and encouraged to help as much as they want that they have a good start.

No one showed me how to cook or bake when I was growing up, but I did watch my mother a lot.  As I got older, she did occasionally let me bake a little something in the kitchen.  But it wasn't until I got married that I really started trying to cook and bake in earnest.  It took many years of horrible food before I started getting consistent edible results.  I think it's a real shame that I went into adulthood with only the knowledge to boil water for pasta, make grilled cheese and bake two types of cookies.  And yet, that's more than so many other young adults know.

Just yesterday, a friend told me about how his girlfriend--at 30--was nearly gagging when she made hamburger patties for their dinner.  She likes hamburgers well enough; it was because she had so infrequently made the patties herself.  Another friend called me one day to ask me how to scramble eggs.   These are only two examples to illustrate my point but there are many many more.

My original idea with this post with the videos was to show you how even a 7 year old can read a recipe and then mix, knead and shape the dough for bagels.  Not only did she do all of that and do it well, it was her idea to do it.  I merely said yes and kept to the kitchen in case she had questions. 

The Point?   Here it is:  Don't let your children grow up to be afraid of cooking and baking and unable to do it.  Encourage them to help.  Encourage them to do it on their own while you supervise.  They are capable of doing so much more than you think!

Wordless Wednesday