California – Page 11 – Hobbits In Rivendell

[in just]/spring

March 21, 2014

2:09 pm

With apologies to e.e., around here, the world is not mud-luscious. It is buzzing, and if you go out the front door, the greedy, tiny, flying pigs will not whistle far and wee, but will divebomb your innocent head and make rude and aggressive “move along” noises at you.

Ah, well. Mud-lusciousness will revisit briefly at the end of the month, according to the long term forecast, as March is almost required to come in like a lion, and then calm the heck down. We’ll see. The last week of the month always throws us a weather curve ball this time of year (and, since Virginia got snow on St. Patrick’s Day, East Coast, we are feeling your pain. Metaphorically, at least.) Meanwhile, while we contemplate perfect sunshine, floods, or thunderstorms, we picked up some super-early strawberries because that chia is still calling us. (And thanks to all the people who have emailed to say they’re trying and liking this mix. It is really good, super quick, and opens itself up to many interpretations.) Imagining making a quick-set jam with it — all those lovely nutrients giving you an additional excuse to spoon it… a jam to which you don’t need to add extra sugar to make it gel… But first, T went off on another experimental tangent.

Our friend L., known to two very short, tiny, opinionated ladies now simply as “Poppy,” has tons of good stories about “back in the day.” We tend to enjoy those “back in the day” tales about food – our Uncle P., may his memory be a blessing, was full of those, and it led to many a happy Sunday recreating recipes from the 1940’s. Last weekend’s “back in the day” tale had to do with teacakes.

Teacakes (variation, “tea cakes”) are A Southern Thang, that is, one of those things which a.) originally didn’t have a recipe (no matter how Ms. P. Deen wants to tell it), and b.) was invented out of necessity – either scarcity, or some useful cause that has been lost to time. T’s father, once upon a time, used to make teacakes, and they were, unlike the sugar cookie varieties that one sees all over the web under the same name, rolled yellow cake, sometimes fragrant with vanilla, leavened with baking soda, and about the size and thickness of a halved English muffin. They were sweet, with a slightly soda-tang, and the tops would sometimes slightly brown and dimple.

T’s father usually made these beauties annually on the 12th of Never, so T. can only recall having them once or twice in her childhood, despite begging … and now, after years of nudges and suggestions for her father to recreate the dish, he can’t remember the recipe. Oh, the wailing! (T. feels it important to point out that she believes his coyness to produce the Super Seekret recipe all those years has returned karmically to bite him in the backside.) Fortunately, there are other less coy members of his generation who do remember.

Though T’s father grew up in the panhandle of Florida, and Poppy was at least a part-time resident of Oklahoma, their variation on tea cakes are close to the same. Poppy’s grandmother’s teacakes were really test cakes for her oven, which was wood-fired and probably didn’t really heat evenly until it got going. She took cake batter – yellow cake batter – and made small, palm-sized test cakes, which an adoring grandbaby was only too happy to test for her.

As others have said, variations abound in the teacake country, not to mention the world. Originally, teacakes were measured with tea cups – actual, bone-china tea cups. Many old recipes use those measurements, which is where our plain old “cup” measure originated. T opted against using her antique (mismatched and beloved) china for this! Of course, any teacake coming from The T&D Test Kitchen will be not “authentic” Southern at all, despite D. having been born and living for ten minutes Murfreesboro as a teeny-tiny infant (apparently “Southern” doesn’t count if you can’t focus or speak). To add further to the “inauthenticity,” we introduced the abomination of chocolate chips!! But the teacakes themselves were tender and tasty and, piled with strawberries, a harbinger of things to come.

Chocolate Chip Teacakes

Preheat oven 350°F/170°F

2/3 C. almond flour

1/3 C vital wheat gluten

1/2 C of shortening, butter, or margarine

1/4 C sweetener – “Fake” or sugar

1/2 Tbsp. vanilla

2 Tbsp. cornstarch

1/8 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1/8 tsp. chocolate extract

1/4 C chocolate chips, optional*

2 Tbsp. almond or coconut milk, (opt)

As always, begin by greasing your pan, and turning on the oven. You’ll need a sturdy spatula to blend your ingredients. This dough comes together like a shortbread and/or pie crust – the liquid is only there if you really, really need it – we didn’t, but it’s an option. It’s important to combine your dry ingredients – flours, gluten, salt, sweetener, cornstarch – before you add shortening, or it may combine unevenly. T. started with a spatula, but gave up in the end, and just used her hands.

Add your chocolate chips LAST. We used Barry Callebaut’s Sugar Free 52% semisweet from King Arthur Flour, but it’s really easy to make your own sugar free chocolate morsels, and you SHOULD. These bad boys are expensive. Our only excuse at this point was a lack of time. You’ll also note we used chocolate extract. An extract of chocolate is made the same way vanilla extract is made – alcohol infused through cocoa beans. It’s got a fairly strong alcohol note, and it can be as overwhelming as too much vanilla – moreso, really. BE CAREFUL and MEASURE. Like liquid smoke, too much extract is not one of those things you can take back.

One of the great things about this is if you’re a chocolate chip cookie dough eater – there’s nothing in here you can’t eat raw. Don’t, though, because that’s gross. You can opt out of rolling this cake and bodge the whole thing in a cast iron skillet. Bake it for forty-five minutes, check its progress, and tack on another fifteen minutes, with checks at five minute intervals. You’ll want it a lovely golden brown, but don’t let it go too far! Note that D. wedged it into servings before baking. This really helps in the quest to get it out of the pan!

In case someone wants to argue with us and call these shortbread… Mmmm, okay. Chocolate chip shortbread, whatever. Traditional Scottish shortbread doesn’t contain baking powder, but you can call them what you want. The “cornflour” or cornstarch will help give the nut flour a velvety mouth feel and a richness typical for shortbread, but you can leave it out, if you choose, or substitute the same amount of rice flour, which is what commercial shortbread bakeries use.

The important thing is to imagine how you’ll eat them.

Happy Spring,

D&T

P.S. – We tried that soy whipped cream, which we found at our Raley’s, on a whim – it’s vegan and though it contains sugar, it hadn’t got much. It’s not half bad at all.

C-Ch-Chi-Chia, or, Breakfast Without Frog Spawn

by TadMack

March 17, 2014

5:24 pm

2 Comments on C-Ch-Chi-Chia, or, Breakfast Without Frog Spawn

California, Recipe

(Okay, this is the last time we’re going to mention the frog thing, but seriously. Pille’s distaste still makes us laugh.)

As we mentioned last post, people in need of lowering their carb intake for whatever reason generally find out that their days of buttery toast, hot cereal – granola – etc., are mostly over. Cereal grains and cereal itself can be a fairly high carb entry into the list of foods, and the fact that many of the “best” ones are sweetened… well. And, after our horrifying experience with TVP, we weren’t any too eager to repeat any strange breakfast substitutions, but because we are intrepid food explorers, we… couldn’t help ourselves. Everyone is still talking about how great chia is supposed to be, so…

Symptomatic of a wonky endocrine system is oddly high blood sugar in the morning — and a pre-breakfast morning run or, in our case, slow uphill slog can drive blood sugar into the stratosphere, and then plunge it right down, abruptly, into the basement. It’s one of those things that T’s endocrinologist just says happens – but it means that exercise can be a little more exciting than one expects, what with the sweating, dizziness, and shaking and all. A box of raisins eaten halfway through a hike really helps as does a breakfast with just enough carbohydrate to give you fuel, and just enough fiber to give your body something to work on long enough so you don’t pass out. Runner, writer, and blogger Carolyn Ketchum eats this mix of flax and chia before long runs, and finds it gets her energy to get all the way home for Second Breakfast. (Life should provide two breakfasts, shouldn’t it? Sounds good to us!)

Hot Chia Flax Cereal

2 tbsp chia seed

2 tbsp flax seed meal

2 tsp sweetener

1/3 cup hot water

2 tbsp cream (optional)

2 tbsp nut butter (optional)

fresh berries(optional)

In a small bowl, stir together chia seed, flax seed meal, and sweetener. Add hot water, stir and let sit for 2-3 minutes. Please do time yourself, and DO NOT go unload the dishwasher, run out and water the plants, or talk to the neighbor; by the time you return, your cereal will have solidified. Stir in cream or butter, sprinkle with a little cinnamon, nut butter, berries, raisins, cracked pumpkin seeds…you name it (in the low carb food arena) you can add it.

Makes 1 serving, and, sans optional ingredients, contains a total of 18 g of carbohydrate and 18 g of fiber.

This was surprisingly tasty! T decided against grinding the chia this time, simply because she’s afraid of its gelling properties, and didn’t want to it to act on the flax and water before she was ready. (And, since she wandered off, it did that anyway, without being ground.) Despite our COMPLETE incredulity and expectation that it would be disgusting, we were happily disappointed. It was really good – crunchy and hot and tasty. We kept it vegan, using the So Delicious Coconut Creamer for our cream, and a sprinkle of the lovely King Arthur Vietnamese cinnamon (we got it as a gift from our friend K., and have become addicted) for flavor. Really filling and tasty, and perfect for a hot, sweet, nutty cereal …

But, D. took it a step further. In his quest for polenta/grits, he took a tablespoon of chia seed, a tablespoon of cornmeal grits, three quarters of a cup of almond flour. Together with a two cups of water – one cold, the other, boiling hot and added while cooking – he boiled the heck out of this mixture and served it with a little salt, butter, eggs and sausage. The texture isn’t quite right yet – too much water made it weirdly fluffy, instead of the dense, slightly gritty, slightly gelatinous mix that is polenta/grits/Romanian Mămăligă, like we ate with our friend Axel, but we’re moving in the right direction. Progress! Until next time…

this-n-that

by TadMack

January 24, 2014

12:28 pm

2 Comments on this-n-that

Baking, California

It’s been a busy month – and a strange one. T. is gathering elastic, dye, and fabric glue, and eying her increasingly baggy wardrobe (-3 stone and counting) closely, as she’s become obsessed with the New Dress A Day website. (Yes, be afraid.) D. is prepping the curriculum to teach his first online course, which requires a lot of time ignoring the computer and a critical reading various 80’s novels which have nothing to do with anything, but which nonetheless make him happier than prepping his curricula. As the rest of the country wallows in snow drifts, the West Coast reprises The Great Dust Bowl Drought of Epic Proportions. No, really. Pretty soon there will be a name for it, like Polar Vortex or something. We would give a lot to have some of the East Coast’s snow melting over our parched lawns here, but as it’s currently snowing in TEXAS, maybe we’d better be careful what we wish for…

At the beginning of the year, there’s often an uptick of “Three Ingredient X,” or “Almost No-Fat Y” recipes that come up on food blogger blogs, as everyone frantically pretends to be virtuous and conventional-wisdom-on-diets compliant. We’ve avoided that trend entirely by making Tri-Sugar Tropical Banana Cake. It’s not just ONE kind of sugar, it’s THREE. Beat that, non-fat people! Of course, it’s three sugars, but three natural sugars, in reasonable small amounts, which makes it lower carb, and a reasonable snack. This was a “dump” recipe that T dreamed up because she wanted banana ~~bread~~ cake and was tired of *cough* waiting for other people to make it for her. And for the people who whined that they, too, had blackened bananas sitting in their fruit bowls at home, and why couldn’t T come over and help them – well. This is why God gave you exchange students and an oven, right? Here we go:

Tropical Spiced Banana Cake

And, note, it’s not banana bread. Like our Scottish friends, we’ve decided to call it as we see it. If there’s more than a couple tablespoons of sugar in there, it’s CAKE.

1 C Whole Wheat Flour

2 C Almond Meal

3/4 C Muesli (we used Bob’s Red Mill)

12 Dates Chopped

4 Very Ripe Bananas, Mashed

2 Tbsp. Honey

2 Tbsp. Truvia

2/4 C pistachios, roughly chopped

3 Eggs (we used chicken, but *flax also works)

1/4 C Coconut oil

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 Tbsp freshly ground cinnamon

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

1 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

Hearty pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 350°F/175°C. Oil or parchment line a 9″ cake pan or two 9×5″ loaf pans, to have one to freeze. This is one of those recipes where you can truly just assemble the ingredients in order, dump them in the bowl, and get on with things. The batter is a muffin batter, meant to be chunky, so while you want your flour to be fully hydrated, don’t worry about mashing your bananas to more than chunks – you don’t have to puree them. Bake your cake for fifty-five minutes, or, in the separate pans, bake for forty minutes ’til golden brown and an inserted bamboo skewer comes out clean. (DO test with a skewer every ten minutes after the first thirty-five – depending on if your flour was kiln-dried or not, your mix may need more or less time.)

The riper your fruit, the sweeter your cake, so be sure they’re really well freckled and fragrant. Be sure of your honey! The stuff that comes in the squeeze-y bear often has sugar added – you want real, plain honey. For your health, make sure it’s from a safe, local source. You can also use maple syrup or agave.

The pistachios were a last-minute addition. They’re so plentiful this time of year, and less expensive than usual, and made a nice change from walnuts. The shocking glimpses of green in the bread also had their own appeal. Small children may turn up their noses at this – which is crucial in the More For You category.

Carb Counters:343 carbs for the whole. 171.5. per 9×5 loaf. 21.4 g carb per slice when said loaf is divided into 8 equal pieces.

Sadly, what with assembling a large piece of Ikea furniture (goodbye weekends, hello *!%$*#& Allen wrenches), getting a new robot vacuum cleaner, and making a jump-start on Spring Cleaning, in deference to T’s allergies, we never got around to staging and photographing this ~~bre~~ — erm, cake. However, we are not immune to your need for food photos. Here now some completely gratuitous pictures of Rhubarb Jam Tarlets from when we received farm boxes of the stuff, and couldn’t eat it fast enough. Please ogle responsibly.

We mentioned back in September, T’s youngest sister was facing kidney failure. Just last week, she jumped to the top of the kidney transplant list, and voila – a new internal organ became available! After a three-hour surgery and a very boring week-long hospital stay, now the hard part begins – making that sucker stick around. This means a six months period in which Bug mourns that she cannot get her ears pierced, dye her hair, or attend school. She is also on major drugs which, while ensuring her body doesn’t reject the new organ outright, also bring her to some fairly intense emotional highs and lows – literally, there’s been hysterical laughter and hysterical sobbing within the same hour. It’s like all your teen years all at once, on Fast Forward! It’s a bit crazy-making for the family so far, but y’know what? Life is worth whatever struggle…

As someone who has had her share of being housebound for illnesses in the (hallelujah, far distant!) past, T’s convinced that our old and pine-tree-dust-prone house can be made into a safe Destination, for when Bug gets sick of her own four walls. To that end, she has gotten deeply involved with cleaning products which will aid in purifying the house, but not offend D’s sensibilities or annoy her sinuses in the process. Enter the Mrs. Meyers Clean Day line of products. Yes, yes, everyone has heard of them by now – we’re always late to the ball game. We’ve gotten fond of their lavender dish soap, which makes the whole kitchen smell nice. But T’s mostly bemused by them because she has been glazing over, staring at gardening catalogs lately, thus was enchanted into ordering Radish All-Purpose Cleanser. Yes. Radish-scented cleanser. We know what they sharply flavored little buggers taste like — but what does radish even smell like??? Tune in next time, inquiring minds will be told…

Chilly Changes

by TadMack

December 8, 2013

1:16 pm

1 Comment on Chilly Changes

Baking, California, Food, Kitchen Favorites, Life, Recipe

This morning, the frost on the deck has stayed… well into afternoon. Freezes and a few snow flurries this past week have been a surprising change from the previous weekend, when errands could still be done on one’s shirtsleeves (if done briskly, anyway). And now, the change of season has brought with it both fewer stresses, and additional ones. 2014 is suddenly bearing down on us, and the tentative thoughts we’d had about changes in the new year will soon be… more than thoughts. D. will be lecturing for an online course for a university this year, and T. has agreed to joining a vision board for a camping and retreat organization. Both D. and T. are taking on this additional jobs against their better judgment, and there will be many adjustments in the new year – and possibly a lot of whining as well. Nevertheless, one always has to try out opportunity like a coat still bearing its tags. Maybe something is meant to fit…

Meanwhile, we’ve begun to amble about the countryside a bit, in search of the unusual, as we gather items for the festive season. At a diner on the 680 industrial corridor outside of Benicia netted us a yummy breakfast at Rosie’s Cafe, and the chance to watch trains – right up close. That was probably the last weekend we could reasonably sit outside in the thin autumn sunshine, but it was well worth it to chow down on zucchini, broccoli, tomatoes and onions stuffed into an omelette and a perfectly toasted English muffin. Cheap and entertaining – can’t beat that.

Our diner luck held, the following weekend, and we were excited to discover a tiny cafe tucked into the edge of a shopping plaza in Pleasant Hill that has regular diner options and vegan ones as well. Real diners – places where requesting a half-caf mocha latte with sprinkles will get you nothing but regular refills of strong black coffee and a bowl of those little vats of cream – are traditionally completely impatient with the high maintenance requirements of foodies. They’re usually cheek-by-jowl with irascible old people, shifty-looking loners, families full of sticky children, and cackling dames gossiping over their tea. Plaza Cafe has all this — plus scrambled tofu among its breakfast offerings, and huge portions – tell the server you won’t need the hash browns or you’ll never finish. A cash-only cafe, full of “regulars,” Little League families, and surprised newbies like us, who just happened to wander in, this place is right in the middle of everything, yet off the beaten path. Those in the area will find it worthwhile to check it out.

A brisk, sunny day, Thanksgiving was a gift of family, new friends, and a plethora of great tastes. Our meal consisted of garlicky roasts and lentil loaf with a surprising bbq sauce, a savory barley risotto, rich mashed sweet potatoes, studded with bits of fried apple and onion, an amazing vegan kugel-style mac-n-cheese, the regular mashed potatoes, green beans with slivered almonds, salad greens with Honeycrisp apples and bright bursts of pomegranate arils, and silky mashed… cauliflower. Which we’re still not sure we believe contained no potato whatsoever. One of the nicest additions to the meal, aside from numerous pies, was T’s resurrecting her vegan cheesecake. Once upon a time, this was the go-to recipe, lemon cheesecake. Since then, it has had a few variations — this year, cranberry apple. Since the last time we blogged this particular recipe was in 2008, we’ll go ahead and repost:

Basic Vegan Cheesecake

1 14 oz pkg. firm silken tofu

1 8 oz. pkg “Cream Cheese” Tofutti, Daiya or, substitute regular creamed cheese if you’d like

2/3 c. sweetener – we used erythritol

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 tbsp cornstarch + ice water

Though a graham cracker crust is traditional, a more flavorful — and less apt to go soggy — alternative is a gingersnap crust. You can make it in the same way — whiz up ten or fifteen dry gingersnaps in your food processor (or, ginger nuts, as they’re also called) and add a tablespoon of butter or margarine to create a crumb the texture of damp sand, and then pack it with your fingertips into the bottom of a spring form pan. Pre-baking the crust is unnecessary.

~ Preheat Oven 350°F ~

Place silken tofu, cream cheese in bowl, and, using an immersion blender or beater, blend until smooth. Add your flavoring. If you’re making a lemon cheesecake base, 1/4 c. of lemon juice at this stage will give you a perfect tang.

In a smaller separate bowl, combine 2 tbsp ice water, your extract and cornstarch with a whisk. Pour mixture into tofu blend and beat until VERY smooth. Pour lemon filling into gingersnap crust, and bake for 45 minutes. Allow to cool for two hours, or for very best firmness, REFRIGERATE OVERNIGHT. We left ours in the oven and just went to bed, and it refrained from cracking in this way, but cooling SLOWLY.

We topped this lovely pie with cranberry applesauce. This may seem a strange choice, but adding apples to cranberry sauce sweetened and took the edge from the fresh cranberries, allowing us to use less sweetener. Also, the pectin from the peels brought the sauce a really smooth mouth feel, complimenting the creaminess of the tofu. This cheesecake with a citrus sauce, chocolate ganache, or a bright berry coulee would also have worked beautifully.

Our next test kitchen project upstairs is attempting to make sourdough rye bread. Rye flour contains little or no gluten, which means that it’s so far lying sullenly in the big silver bowl, staring at us… and yet, the commercial bakeries at Raley’s and Nob Hill bring forth perfectly light, chewy, sour loaves with thick, crisp crusts, on a weekly basis. Their secret has to be, in part, the baking vessels, which must be cast iron, to make that lovely crust, and we have a great pair of cast iron skillets which together will create a Dutch oven. But, only time will tell what else goes into the mix to make a great rye sourdough. Stay tuned!

Settling Back In…

by David T. Macknet

November 18, 2013

10:24 am

2 Comments on Settling Back In…

California, Critters

We’re settling back into the groove of being in California, and have finally made it to the local pool (yes, it’s free to swim … between 5:30 a.m. and 7:00 a.m., but you try getting out of the house and into the water in the cold, dim morning). Nothing much is happening here – just getting ready for Thanksgiving, and finally getting around to the idea that we should hang some pictures, since we’ve been in this house for over a year and it doesn’t look like we’ll be leaving any time soon.

If anybody should need a Thanksgiving Turkey, just know that they frequent our neighborhood, and that we’re not responsible for your actions….

-D & T

Everything Goes Better With… A Baker’s Report

by TadMack

October 21, 2013

12:08 pm

1 Comment on Everything Goes Better With… A Baker’s Report

Baking, California, Food, Life

We’re well past a report on the baking experiments, but the goods have been, to say the least, odd. Still, the odds are good that eventually, we’ll get this whole thing right!

The mise en place chefs continue to rise to the top, because they always know what ingredients they have before they start cooking. If you, like T., finds the filling of little bowls with measured and prepped ingredients fiddly, well… too bad. She started these fudge brownies with what she had on hand – insufficient cocoa powder and no eggs. Oh, the fun things you discover as you go along without the little prep bowls! No problem; she’s good with flip-flopping between vegan and not, and we have lots of solid baker’s chocolate. Unfortunately, almond flour is a pickier substance, and isn’t as easy with her choices.

We’ve talked before about how to make a flax “egg” – but you absolutely must account for that three tablespoons of water that you’ve used. It’s VERY EASY for almond flour pastries to become too moist. It’s one of the perks of baking with almond flour – lovely, moist cakes that don’t dry out, but oh, be careful, little bakers. Vegan-izing can so easily lead to disaster.

T. used the “basic” quickbread ratio for almond flour – two cups of almond flour to a half cup of cocoa powder (augmented with grated chocolate), a third cup of vital wheat gluten, 2/3 c. of a combination of Truvia and erythritol, a teaspoon of vanilla, and about a half cup of milk.

Aaand, there’s problem #2 – that pesky word “about.” It’s been really hard for both T. and D. to get through their heads that everything they think they know about baking no longer counts. We’re just not good enough yet to substitute without measuring. Right now, we’re conforming closely to recipes from The Low Carb Baking and Dessert Cookbook by Ursula Solom and Low Carbing Among Friends, by Carolyn Ketchum & Co…. and trying REALLY hard not to give in to the inevitable urge to just substitute… and failing. Repeatedly.

We have lovely in-the-process pictures from baking these fudge brownies. They came together well – baked up well – but I had some questions as soon as we took it out of its springform. The bottom seemed … too moist. We let it cool completely before doing anything with it, having learned out lesson last time about mucking around with almond flour pastries before they’re cool enough to move — but I thought, “hmmm,” as I saw how damp it was. Not a good “hmm,” either.

And yet, they were SO delicious, and so moist, and …so caved in on the top, and ugly, which is something we can lay at the door of overly-moist as well. They were super-ugly, which is a big minus, since we always like to bake to share, but amazingly chocolate-y, with a deep, rich flavor. Too moist, but yummy, like a fudge brownie pudding, maybe. We couldn’t figure out which way we wanted to go for frosting – plain? A cream cheese base? A chocolate frosting? We tried both plain and cream cheese – really, really tasty. We never got to the ganache we were going to make. Unfortunately, a cake so moist does not keep well – you have to refrigerate it, and we didn’t. YES: we ate a chocolate cake so slowly that it went bad. That’s got to be one for the books, but it really WAS good, and next time – well, we’ve got a lot of plans for next time…

Rodent Wars

by TadMack

October 18, 2013

11:20 am

For What We Are About To Receive…

by TadMack

October 2, 2013

12:26 pm

1 Comment on For What We Are About To Receive…

California, Food

Sometimes what you think is The Worst turns out to be …livable.

Thanks for all the nice notes about T’s sister. We were afraid for The Bug – known as Bug, since D. convinced her, when she was about four, that pomegranate seeds were bugs, and she ate them anyway – We were afraid that doing the stupid every-other-day dialysis would make her senior year a drag, that her social life would wither and blow away, that she’d miss out on some ephemeral something found only by being in high school. We thought she would be resentful, sullen, cranky – things we certainly would be. We did not expect the return of flashes of zany exuberance, 8 a.m. phone calls about what ridiculous video she had found on YouTube (“No, WATCH IT!! It’s FUNNY!”) and an amiable acceptance of the hand she’s been played. She feels better, for sure, her gimpy internal organs bolstered by a big, scary looking machine. WE were the ones who were afraid. She’s… seventeen. Hardly young and sweet, but apparently impervious. Unsinkable.

And, really – the whole “senior year” thing is a societal construct, much like the idea that the teen years are the “best years” of one’s life. Who actually believes that? If so, won’t the rest of your life stretch before you like an unpalatable desert road that you simply must travel, until you fall over? What’s the point of that? Better to watch this person living, hoarding the little crumbs of joy into a whole loaf, as she goes on. We got her this “Hello Kidney” shirt to wear to dialysis – might have to get her a few more in various colors. Together with her plush kidney, she is the pinnacle of snarkiness, ready for anything.

Thank God.

Autumn is, and that pumpkin-nut-apple-cranberry thing is happening, and leaves, and sunsets, and America is about to lose its stuff on running around, throwing garlands and gourds on everything, and baking up a storm. We’re right in there, of course, looking anxiously for the first frosty night (way, waaaaay off, if the warm sunny days after the one fluke day of icy rain are any indication), checking for full moons, and looking up every time a ragged line of geese goes honking by in practice formation. Californians, at least, love Autumn, because it tries so hard. In a state largely without seasons (but now, with climate change, we’re getting …something) just the green leaves crisping into brown, even without a major yellow-gold-red color show (Oh, hush, East Coast) is a favorite thing for many.

Thanksgiving is at our house again this year, because we have the most space coupled with the least number of people in residence. We think we’ll be more prepared this year than last – first, we won’t have just moved in (despite what it looks like with the boxes half packed to move, as we were planning a month ago. ::sigh::). We have a heater for the cold basement office/game room, which means we have a place to ~~escape from the Wee~~ let the Wee boys play, and stretch-out space for the interminable games – Six Hour Monopoly (which happens when you play with the very young), very short Scrabble games (where people CHEAT), and possibly this year, league-level (hah) Canasta, which we somehow have to reteach everyone every single year. The social bits all work out – T’s family amuses each other even when it’s not a holiday – but our dinner menu is going to be Something Of A Challenge this time around. Against a holiday menu that traditionally focuses so heavily on that aforementioned autumn baking, we’ll balance:

one hardcore vegan
one flexible vega
six carnivores
one flexitarian/pescatarian
three vegetarians

– PLUS! – three near diabetics and one kidney failure patient on a modified renal diet which is supposed to include nearly no salt, low protein, no carbonation, and low liquid overall. Not counting food dislikes or allergies – Oh, yes! We also have one gluten sensitive/intolerant – this salt free, sugar free, low carb, meat free, dairy free thing is going to be quite something. If looked at it from the perspective of making one meal with courses, it would be somewhat impossible. Fortunately, this family subscribes to the Are You Kidding, Make It Yourself school of holiday meals.

A few wise hosts are putting their guests on notice about their finicky food preferences this year, but since the “preferences” in our family are more a matter of necessity, we’re going to try and stretch our investigative skills. There has to be something really special we can make for the dialysis diet. We’re already on our way with the vegan desserts – throwing low carb and gluten free into the mix should be easy enough, right? After a few years practice making turkey for Christmas for Everyone, D’s gotten pretty good at it, so the carnivores are easy. Kind of.

Holiday meals are about gratitude – being grateful for the company of friends, the history (if not the present) of our nation, and the presence of family, etc. This year, we’re going to be truly grateful for the food, and that we have the leisure to experiment, that there are always new tastes and techniques to discover, and that we love each other enough to try to make what could be seen as a frustration into something uniquely …us.

Home, Making

by TadMack

September 3, 2013

4:15 pm

4 Comments on Home, Making

Baking, California, Food, Life

Once again, we draw to the close of another California summer. Unlike last year at this time, we’re not moving – yet – but that’s coming. Boxes are half-packed, projects are wrapping up, priorities are shifting, and we’re hopeful about future endeavors. We’re about to hit the road again — and , yes – we’ve been saving toward to a trip to Scotland sometime this autumn. It doesn’t hurt to have something waiting in the wings, to anticipate. Without these things, life tends to be just a little … flat, somehow.

On D’s end of the world, projects have really changed. We’d made a commitment to actually move in the location of one of his work-sites, but felt we’d be better served by waiting for a different project to come along. Finger crossed, we’ll know something more today! It’s been strange for D. to have been on two projects already this year, but he’s hopeful that longer-term positions – with fewer corporate politics – are on the horizon.

Meanwhile, T., who started a novel to give herself a break from revising a different one, has finally finished the replacement novel… and, right now, likes it better. Her agent is both amused and ambivalent. “Okay, then, give me that one,” is his response. Meanwhile, during the polishing of various pages, the beginnings of three other novels have sprouted in her head… so many ideas, so little time, and so much pouting when it comes time for revisions. Typical, typical.

It has been a beautiful summer. Aside from the spike during the first week of July – which we spent in Baltimore, trying to breathe water – the weather has been a lovely thing. The nippy nighttime lows in the 40’s/10’s and the days in the balmy 70’s-80’s/high 10’s-20’s, has made the days roll past pleasantly. We’ve made sure to keep our California Residency Kits nice and updated by both mucking about in the dirt a little bit – our Garden Away From Home has produced tomatoes, lovely cucumbers, and a watermelon is getting to the proper size at last – and tie-dyeing a few things, as one does when one lives here. ☺ (T. was born in San Francisco. Some things just come with the territory.)

We have had fun exploring a new form of dyeing which includes ice. Very correct for summer, indeed! We took soda-ash treated fabric and crumpled the damp fabric on stacked racks in the sink. We piled on crushed ice onto the top layer until the fabric was entirely covered, and then sprinkled powdered dye in various spatterings all over it. It’s not exactly tie-dye, it’s a bit more random, especially with the effect of the dilution/dripping from the melting ice from one layer to the next. The combination of splotches, drips, and the sharper colors from the dye concentrate remind us of Monet’s blurry impressionistic pointillism. We’re looking forward to finding better surfaces and doing a big project like a set of sheets. (The porcelain sink really did not love us for mucking about in it, but oh, well. Onward!)

In the midst of our happy, there is a bit of sad giving us some perspective. T’s kid sister is stuck in the hospital this week with a failing kidney. This latest bump on the road to failure, while imminent for a long, long time, coincided with the first week of her senior year in high school, which is just a big, fat crock of crap. Usually a girl with a penumbra of attitude and energy that extends three feet in any direction, now she’s drained and exhausted — and suddenly looks pretty small, which is a hard dose of reality to her family and friends. We continue to keep our fingers crossed that bed rest and massive antibiotics will let her pull out just one more year of use out of her gimpy kidneys, so she can wave goodbye to high school in style.

While others cheer the return of school rooms or favorite TV shows, for us, autumn is about the house being cool enough to bake! We eyed Smitten Kitchen’s almond crisped peaches, but never managed to make them, as the peaches – so huge and lovely from the Dixon Fruit Market – have simply never lasted long enough in this house! That’s a recipe to come back to, however.

In early March, there was a round of medical visits which gave us some expected – but unwelcome – news – heredity strikes again. Our families on both sides tend toward diabetes, and though we’re largely healthy, our internal organs had been showing some signs of wear. In an effort to prepare for what the doctor’s prognosis of the inevitable, we’ve changed some of our dietary habits for good. What’s been missing from our diets for the last six months? Conspicuous consumption of carbohydrates.

…not fats. Some people are surprised by that, but we were not… we’ve had an inkling all along that it wasn’t the butter or the eggs but the sugar that was going to ding us in the end. It makes us a little grumpy to be right…:sigh:.

As everyone knows, changing any dietary habit is really difficult – but tinkering with one of the building blocks of the food group seemed, at first, pretty dire. The name of this blog, way back in – sheesh, 2004? – was “Wish I Were Baking.” It wasn’t “Wish I Were Steaming Kale,” although that’s a fairly awesome name if you’re not obsessed with getting the perfect rise from a loaf of artisan bread. There was a lot of mental adjustment that had to take place, we knew, if any changes were going to be successful. If you look at a required change in your life as a tragedy… you can forget about it happening. We firmly elected to still find things to enjoy.

With that attitude in hand, we’ve been relieved to discover that it’s not been very hard. (Faced with the choice of your liver and pancreas imploding in flames, or drinking unsweetened iced tea instead of soda, what choice would you make?) Not only that, we’re enjoying the challenge. Cooks and bakers have had hundreds and thousands of years to perfect baking with traditional ingredients – flours, sugars, etc. – but there’s a lot less out there about tasty, healthy low-carb ingredients. (Please note the preface “tasty” before “healthy.” There’s enough out there that does not include either of those two things, trust us.) We’ve been waiting eagerly for the days to cool a bit, before launching ourselves into baking again. We’ve made a few experimental forays – which we haven’t photographed.

We call those things that don’t get on camera “Learning Experiences.” There were The Waffles of Brickyness, when Axel was visiting, which were the heaviest things we’d ever eaten. We learned from that, of course; namely that coconut flour is ALL FIBER and must be used sparingly and with some gluten powder, for goodness sakes. Most recently, the Pear Tart of Awful was a completely unnecessary disaster – fresh pears, lemon zest, vanilla, almond flour… and a sneaky quarter teaspoon of xanthan gum some bright light decided to include. What is xanthan gum for? Not homemade pear tarts, T.. Next time, we’ll stick to adding it to the one recipe we bought it for. Ugh. A shame, when we’d even made it vegan and everything… :sigh: Time to repeat the Test Kitchen Mantra: We cook, we fail, we move on.

Of course, we can’t go on and on about the amusing failures without discussing the successes. The slightly crumbly pigs-in-blankets – we hadn’t quite learned how almond flour worked, but those were tasty, even if they didn’t quite stay together. And, Lemon tea cakes, anyone? Yes, please. Tender and fragrant and a perfect combination of citrus and sweet. Very tasty, and quick, which was fun. A “throw-it-together” banana bread also turned out well, which just proves that you can make banana bread anytime, anywhere, out of pretty much anything. We are pleased with the lift the quick breads have – a really nice crumb, so we’re encouraged to keep trying! Up next will be a made-over recipe for the date slice we loved so well in Scotland – aka a date bar. A short almond crust, chopped pecans, and dates… yum. We’re also eying a lemon poundcake made with coconut and almond flour – dense, moist, and citrussy heaven. And, once they’re almost foolproof, recipes to follow.

Not every dish can have the natural sweetness of dates or bananas – sometimes, you just need rich, bitter chocolate. Our experiments with sweeteners in that vein have been mixed. There are tons of sugar substitutes – sugar alcohols – on the market – but only a very few which do not cause gastric distress in the amounts used in baking. However, we’ve had success in mixing a little bit of this, and a little bit of that – a blend of stevia and erythritol, the sugar substitute popular in Japanese cuisine, has seemed to work well thus far. Interestingly, erythritol isn’t all that sweet – it’s about 70% as sweet as sugar. However! With the addition of vanilla, one can trick the brain into thinking it’s eating something much sweeter. (We got this tip from a recent issue of Nature.) All these experiments and recipe makeovers are a work in progress, and the amount of small successes we’ve had has encouraged us to try bigger things… like that pear tart. :shudder: Well, we’re not fans of the idea of a “test kitchen” for nothing…

Our best “discovery” has been almond flour – it is lovely and nutty – completely gluten free, and very low in carbohydrate. A couple tablespoons of vital wheat gluten helps it lift in quick breads or biscuits, and a little lemon zest gives it interest – it seems to need a little citrus punch to keep it from being too nutty/sweet – but we’ve not managed to figure out how to use it for yeast breads – and that’s okay. Perfection probably shouldn’t be messed with, so we’re looking forward to turning out the perfect, crusty loaf of sourdough rye – and learning to sprout our own grain – and just eating our daily bread sparingly, with gratitude.

Truly: with gratitude. We’re down a few pounds, and feeling healthy. We have options. We have optimism, creativity and stamina, and a lot of garbage bags. We’re going to be just fine.

Nothing but blue skies ahead – and full ovens, soon. Happy autumn.

Freeway Pilgrims and Other Sojourners: On Travel

by TadMack

August 15, 2013

2:22 pm

1 Comment on Freeway Pilgrims and Other Sojourners: On Travel

California, Life

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

A friend said recently that travel wasn’t fun anymore.

While this may not be ground-breaking, and while she specified air travel in particular, the idea that travel is supposed to be fun is perhaps more significant. People used to go on pilgrimages and take long sea journeys as part of a sacred duty or their life’s work. They gathered their households onto their backs and set out on foot for better food, more land, better opportunities, better lives. It wasn’t for fun. Beautiful island locations why not try these out and understand where you can do a photoshoot. It was necessity, curiosity, and that stupid Manifest Destiny, but not just “fun,” as we understand it now. It’s only now that we have so much where we are that going elsewhere to look at something else is supposed to be part of the lark. And yet, fun is the expectation.

The only problem with the idea of “travel as fun” is that when people are involved, fun can be difficult.

Oh, don’t think that’s just the misanthropic/anthropophobic curmudgeon point of view. People in their normal habitats – eating, shopping, going to school – are fine. People in the act of traveling outside of their normal haunts – in and around airports, or on crowded interstate freeways, in train or at BART stations – those people are usually not fine. Impatient, rushing, pushy, increasingly belligerent people; loud, drunk, boundary-ignorant and vexing, these people’s public faces are something we sometimes wish they left at home. Is it because the toys of our culture allow us solo entertainment that we’ve lost the ability to get along in groups? Courtesy is not a lost art – truly, it’s not. In a thousand different ways, people show kindness to strangers, even in airports. It only seems like the vast majority prefers to act as boorish in public as possible.

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

Travel does not always bring out our shiniest side. Even with the familiarity of the routines of security theater and suitcase maneuvering, we still have moments of bewilderment, as the unexpected takes over. Even things one expects one can count on, like the temperaments of friends, can come into question. People who are one way at home can, in a hotel room, emerge as beings wholly other than previously experienced. Friends who traveled with their grown children this past year have indicated that it wasn’t quite what they expected, and after travels with her adolescent son, another friend said the words “never again” quite firmly (and so did we). Couples we’ve known, traveling together, have decided to end their journeys solo after discovering that hardship and inconvenience does not bring out the best in every partner.

“I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” – Lillian Smith

Travel – this curious, ephemeral thing – is a gift. We are weaned on the idea of life being a journey, a locomotion from Birth to Death, with sightseeing along the way. That’s both part of this expansionist American culture – we’ve been chasing that Manifest Destiny forever, despite officially calling it a distasteful ideology – and part of a car-culture road-tripping West Coast heritage. Roads even wind through our language — someone “takes a turn for the worse.” We have “a rough road ahead,” or a “rocky road” might be dessert or a hard luck story. Robert Frost’s “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – ” – Virginia Slims “You’ve come a long way, Baby” – we’ve been, as a people, on the move for a long, long time, before chuck wagons and wagon trains. Perhaps it is a part of an American’s Puritan roots; if you believe that you are “but a pilgrim and a stranger;” just someone passing through, that there is a degree of impermanence to the place where you are, and the state of your existence, this changes the way you think. Things matter both more and less that you’d perhaps previously believed, if we’re all on our way elsewhere.

In grasping for that permanent impermanence, we are both energized and freed. If we are all on a journey, then we can take a deep breath when someone jumps a line and gets on the plane sooner than us. The progress isn’t where we are in line on the freeway, but the destination, yes? Getting there one car-length ahead will only anger those people we cut in front of, possibly damage our own bumpers, and cause further delays. And is it really our right to make things less fun for anyone else? Probably, no.

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

If we are merely traveling, and our destination is our life’s purpose, then making sure that we all get there in one piece should be an objective. With that worldview, picking up someone else’s luggage and helping them get it into the overhead compartment shouldn’t be out of the question. It is freeing to realize that, rather than each choice locking us into a permanent road, the choices we make as we travel are merely crossroads – and U-turns are still available, as is backtracking. If we miss a plane or a turn, we can try again. Travel does not exist in the realm of “only” and black and white.

While traveling, we may get sick from the water, we may not understand the language, but as long as we’re not home, we still have a chance to see things we haven’t seen. We should never fear being lost, because the journey back will always give us new insights, as we travel. Certainly, we’ve come away with better stories – remember that time we saw the spotted piglets on that one dirt road when we were lost that one time? – that we would have had staying on the paved roads of familiarity.

As every Hobbit knows, not all who wander are lost.

…A reflection on travel as fun, as we near the end of this summer of Here and There and home again, a summer of knowing where we’re going, of celebrating where we’ve been; of acknowledging that this is not where we plan to stop for long; an exploration of the journey as equally imperative as the destination.

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in…” – D. H. Lawrence

Glasgow:
NY:
Grinnell:
Roswell:
Berkeley: