Inspiration and Easter

So how long have I been gone...oof, way too long! You could say a lot's gone on since I last posted. - things at work, kids all getting taller than me, towels toppling - so on and so forth. The biggest thing wasn't really me directly, but a health issue that came up in the family. In the interest of keeping it on the down low, the cathartic to have shared things that were going on.

Inspiration has struck me, though, in the form of a 16 year old who decided to start her own blog. Oddly enough, cause of me...go figure! My lil Carrot Girl...all grown up and blogging...sorta...maybe...ok, we'll see how this works out.  No, really, so far, so good - it's going to be interesting to see where it takes her. Oh - while she's going by that name, I did want to clarify, this is the Elfling we're talking about.

Easter evening and I'm here at work. It's been quiet and I have to admit, I'm feeling this side of tired. It started pretty early with at least one excited girl...I think she got me up to watch a movie but we wound up with Amer Hor Story - hey, did I get that right?? That show is it's own post, let me tell you!

Anyhow...*grins* my tradition with the girls is making up an Easter basket for each of them. I like to do a pile o' candy (of course) but with a couple non-candy treats like lip gloss or pretty soaps. This year it was really cute, mini notebooks with purple pens and Hello Kitty bandaids. They went over like a dream so, hey, a win!

Ham is usually the big thing around here but since I had work at 3, I decided to try something new. When dealing with a big honkin' piece of meat is no longer the plan, what do you do? Brunch, of course..duh and or hola!

Inspiration came in the form of Ina Garten - I've always, always, always wanted to make her smoked salmon frittata....course...I didn't today cause...let's face it, my budget doesn't allow for it and my grocery store had no fresh dill.  No dill..what the heck!?! Regardless, I thought I made a nice lil spread - it was perfect for the three of us - here's what was served in Haus der Fae:

Smoked Sausage Frittata

Fried Polenta

Fruit Salat

Joghurt

Granola (of my own doing!)

Carrot Cake w/Cream Cheese Frosting

Seriously - given the Diva went to town, even after being a total glutton with the candy all morning long, you know it had to be good! This was the first time I've made fried polenta that held its shape while being fried - I hope it's something that can be replicated cause I have a feeling it's going to be requested once again in the near future. 

 As the day trickles away - I hope everyone had a great Easter!

Chasing My Thoughts

Seems that's what I'm doing today.  It would have been quite a post if I put it all down in one post - but this is really continuing on thoughts I had from Monday.

As I mentioned in my last post, The Elfling and I stormed World Market in search of a birthday present.  While there, I couldn't resist a few treats.  Nothing really big - a pair of fans for the girls (cherry blossoms, of course!). Till we get to the chocolate at least....but really - I get dark chocolate so it's health food, right?  

Ok...so it wasn't all dark chocolate.  For years I've tolled a particular restaurant website and on the message board I've read so many accounts of chocolate syrups of yore that for some odd reason I couldn't resist a delighted yelp when I came across a bottle of Bosco.  As you can imagine, the first thing I did when I got home was mix up a glass.  Oh...my...GOD....it's so freaking good...I don't know why.  I tried to compare the ingredient lists between it and Hershey's and would you believe - Hershey's doesn't list their ingredients!  

Ah well...whatever it is, Bosco is so good, I bet it'd make even skim milk taste good!

For a lil bit now, I've  been promising that I'd make Spaghetti Carbonara and Sunday night  I finally did.  This isn't a first for me though I think it may have been one of my more sucessful attempts.  I used a recipe from allrecipes with minimal changes.  For example, I used less onion because E outright hates it and I used Canadian bacon because...well...just cause.  I didn't have bacon on hand and it's perhaps a preference.  I also reserved a cup of pasta liquid in case things got too dry while I was cooking.  I'm not sure it was as creamy as it's supposed to but the girls ate with great gusto. 

Served with a lovely salad and a glass of vinho verde it was a lovely meal.

No...I don't know what's up with me and all my linking as of late.  I think it's kinda fun, though!

tEpiphany

Last week I was scrubbing down my kitchen counters when I came to the section of counter space devoted to my tea collection.  Have I mentioned how much I love tea?  Omg - what a jumble!  There was green tea, chamomile, sleepytime tea, apple spice, my favourite English...likely a few others.  While swiping along, I realized that my coffee maker was just a dusty mess...blech.  Goes to show how much I use it, eh?  As I was putting it back in it's place it dawned on me - why the hell was I putting it there??  I mean, I RARELY make coffee and last time I did was probably last year when my sister was visiting.  It was only a moment of contemplation before I chucked to a shelf under my counter - after all, I don't *need* it out everyday.

Oh the bliss of that action!  with my newly freed counter space, I've been able to set up a much more used tea area with my tea boxes neatly stacked, sugar pot and honey jar all close by.  Even better?  My tea kettle is near where it gets used more.  It's not the nearest  spot to the sink but it works so well for me.  Because of my kitchen changes, I was happy to move my really pretty Portuguese pottery bowl to a spot where I can see it and smile...though I should perhaps tackle the crap that's accumulated in it.  You know how it goes, it's a strange sundry of garlic papers, kitty treats and coffee filters.

Wait...coffee filters!?! No, not the ones I used in my coffee pot.  The ones I use for wiping down mirrors - they don't fit my coffee pot nor the one at work.  Who can explain that - it comes with the coffee delivery and we just wind up using them on windows - very nice, lint free wipe. 

Anyhow....nicely set up tea area was a real epiphany for me.  tEpiphany in this case cause I'm cheesy like that.

It's Lunchtime, Lunchtime!

Ha!  Total lie, it's only 930ish here.  However, yesterday, I was looking at my own lunch and realized it's fit for the average preschooler.  *sighs*  PB sandwich (cut into tiny squares, god, not even quarters...like 8ths) and carrot sticks, in case you're wondering.  Oddly enough, this was the first time I've done a sandwich...ever.  No, you sillies - I mean while working here.  Of course I've had sandwiches for lunch before! 

Since I don't get a proper lunch break and very quickly caught on that if I don't eat during the day I wind up with a nagging headache and desire to eat my way into dinner, it's best I bring something.  I started off with just carrot sticks which quell the headache but not the starvation that follows coming home from work but since adding pb crackers, I've found I'm good till dinner.  Yesterday I went to make said crackers only to find my sleeve of them was all sad and crumbly, so improvisation came in handy.  I've done it again today but packing my tiny squares (with some ribbing from E who asked if I was three years old) has made me realize that I should start using one the containers I have for the girls lunches.

Oh, you know, I totally missed the point.  I like tiny bite sizes cause it's inevitable that just as soon as I get a nibble in, the phone bloody rings and I'm sitting there either furiously chewing before answering or...let's not got there. Anyhow...

Speaking of the girls lunches, the Elfling's been taking hers to save on waiting in line.  PE is also right after lunch so I think maybe she feels her lunch is lighter offerings than the cafeteria which does her good - after all, who wants to go running around after a big meal?  The Diva does a bit of both, I wish I could or would pack more of her lunches since I'm willing to bet I do a healthier meal.  Did I mention the super cute containers I have? I saw them last year...or maybe it was two years ago at Borders (RIP *sniffle*) and just had to have them.  They're two sets (round and square) that nest into another - round into round and square into square, of course and just adorable and are perfect for tucking cut up sandwiches, fruit and veg or salad into.  I don't think they're water tight though so I use my lil Glad...whatevers for those things.  I think they just make lunch a lil funner.

While this wasn't really the point of my post, I think it's a nice diversion.  I think I've done better this year with making lunches for the girls  than I did last year.  It's a real treat to make them fun - to have colourful things looking up when you open your lunch bag, find a funny note or word of encouragement and perhaps have a piece of fruit to chuck at that jerk who's called you a name.  Ok...maybe not that last bit, even if they do deserve it.

Tomorrow I'll be planning out my weekly dinner menu and grocery list so don't be surprised if I continue on this bent and mull over my latest adventures in baking. 

What Happened to the Polenta...

“They look like grits, “ was the reply I got to my outraged exclamation when E asked about dinner the other night.  Of course we both know they're pretty much one in the same – with apologies to any Italian friends who may beg to differ.  Nonetheless in THIS household, there's a difference and for my beautiful polenta to have fallen apart into grits was something of a disappointment...even if they did still taste marvelous.

This isn't to knock grits but for someone who pretty much grew up in the South, I actually had very little experience with the stuff.  Looking back I can laugh at my first reactions to the stuff and remember quite clearly being about 9 or so years old.  We'd just moved to North Carolina and I belive were either still looking for a place to call home or in the process of moving into a house when my Mom took us (being younger siblings and me) to brekkie at a local diner.  The special included grits with no other option and so, upon my plate, intruding on my scrambled eggs was this white, almost gelatinous...stuff.  Oh, with a pat of butter dying on top.  Mom and I shared a look before finally she took the first taste and likely saying it tasted fine.

I remember taking a taste and forgetting the whole incident until I had the Elfling and was left face to face with a bowl of the stuff the day after giving birth.  Admittedly, I completely ignored it which left the nurses baffled and offering me, with most dubious looks, oatmeal.  I politely declined and quietly starved till lunch.  Fortunately, E's Mom taught me the fine art of making grits, including to add important things like salt and pepper.  And cheese.

I think a big difference for me, in regards to polenta, is that it's fancier.  It gets started with sauteed aromaticish things and cooked in broth as opposed to milk or water.  It's always a savoury dish with garlic or herbs...or hell, both!  Almost exclusively, I use parm cheese with it and maybe that's why it seems thicker than grits.  Typing this I wonder too, if a difference between packaged grits and cornmeal affects that.  Who knows?

Anyhow – what did happen to my polenta?  I'll tell you what – kids did.  The rule around here is that you need to be in by dark and I'd plotted for dinner to be ready around that time.  My polenta was thick, creamy and just...all that is good.  I had this fab veggie and tomato sauce to serve on top for those who wanted to try.  Darkness fell across the yard and....my kids were nowhere to be seen.  Not wanting my dish to dry out while keeping warm, I added a little milk and personally stewed before the Diva came in full of apologies.  I can accept being late because of a house rule to help pick up after playing so she got a pass for that but reminded that clean up needs to start a little sooner next time.

In the wait for my eldest it seems polenta integrity collapsed.  It turned looser, no longer thick and rich.  Maybe too much heat?  Too long a wait.  It collapsed.  Into grits. The Elfling...oooh....let's just say she thought she was being clever getting her little sister to summon me to the door, as if that would save her from being in the trouble she got.  Heh....no such luck that night.

She found my keys in the forest the next day.  The polenta?  Delish...despite the collapse.

For the Love of Risotto

I'm not sure where the idea came from or perhaps it was inspired by all the dreadful looking risotto that's been shown on Kitchen Nightmares (alas, the US version) but wherever it came from, it's had E wanting to try some for quite sometime.  While perusing the rice selection at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago he brought it up again and so it came to pass a) While I knew it was a short grain rice, I couldn't think of a proper term for it and b) rice selection at this particular store sucks monkey balls as I'd say 90% of it is long grain.  Not wanting to disappoint a sick person...or at least I think he had a cold at the time, I decided to attempt improvising with medium grain rice which isn't short but it's not long either.  Duh...ahem.

Anyhow....as is customary for me when I embark on a culinary journey of newness, I checked my sources.  Usually my go-to bible is my Betty Crocker cookbook.  I think I skipped that this time and went straight for the internet, comparing random risotto to the lessons of Alton Brown. Ultimately, I think I pretty much followed his teachings...maybe.  Kinda sorta.

I was very happy with the end result – despite not being the right rice, the risotto was creamy and all the goodness of someone's comfort food.  A little light on the shrooms but only cause I didn't fee like having two kids fling theirs onto my plate as if they were carcasses of some rogue fleet of well..slice shroom bug creature...thingies.  Would I do it again?  Absolutely!  Committing to memory the type of rice I need (arborio ftw!), I've since wept at the fact that a 5lb bag of it costs as much as like...a 50lb bag or long grain.  How can that be???  Back in Germany I exclusively cooked with short grain rice and it never cost that much!  *le sigh*

Oh well – another day, another attempt at something new!

Wait...were actually wanting to know technique?  I'm going to go about as free from with this recipe as my actual cooking was, so here we go!

darque faerie's semi-deluded risotto recipeish attempt

Start off with a pot of about 5 or 6 cups of chicken broth heating up and in truth for this entire exercise, you might want to keep it nice and piping warmish hot.  Grab up a saute pan and heat up a lil evoo before tossing in piles of sliced up shrooms.  Season with s&p, add a lil beat up garlic and let it cook away happily.

In a heavy saucepan, heat up a lil evoo before tossing in very finely, attempting a point of microscopic minced onion.  Live with people who like onions?  No need to attempt such extremes.  Let it sweat....gain a lovely translucent quality with a lil s&p.  I think I ooh'ed and ahh'ed over it for 5 or 10 min while stirring up my shrooms.  After that, add a pile of minced up garlic and two cups of rice – stir it up and let the rice itself be all nice and glossy and get a lil translucent as well – your tummy will thank you!

When you get to that point or are tired of worrying if you'll get to a point where translucent turn browning or blackened, add about a cup of wine.  I took a sip of an open bottle of vihno verde that was in my fridge, found it yum and added a tiny bit to the caramalizedish shrooms before being just shy of the actual cup that went into risotto.  Marvel at the hissing and protesting noise it makes before stirring it in and letting it absorb some.


At this point, I just used ladle to add broth a bit at a time – usually just above covering the rice.  I think you're supposed to be chained to the oven, constantly stirring but with lowered heat and diligence of being in the kitchen – I stirred a great deal and listened.

They say your risotto talks to you – to listen to it when deciding when to add more broth to it.  I found that my risotto is unlike the coffee pot at IHOP.  Instead of pleasantly chattering about, it mostly grumbles so you really do need to stir and keep an eye for it getting a little too dry.  As it absorbs liquids, add more to it.  Lovingly stir it, rejoice in how creamy it looks despite the medium grain.

This really should go on till you run out of broth to add – a surreptitious taste should indicate that the rice is at least not crunchy hard...mine was perhaps firm but yielding and omg so tasty!  I for the life of me can't recall if I went on dumping some butter in but I did toss in some grated parm along with my cooledish shrooms.  If I didn't mention it above, after deglazing the shrooms and letting the wine reduce, turn off the heat! Anyhow....stir and serve!

Despite the relative vagueness of my technique, as I said earlier, it was delish!

I'd like to end this post with a lil shout out to my friend, Ads – hey Ads!  I was going to talk about my polenta but I'm kinda tired tonight so look forward to it tomorrow.  No...it won't be titled “For the Love of Polenta” - I promise!

Operation Pancake: Failure!

Ok, so it wasn’t a TOTAL failure but these were not your mama’s pancakes we wound up having at brekkie this morning. It started off last night with the Elfling asking if we could have said flapjacks in the morning and since we didn’t have any pancake mix, I said I’d give consideration to the idea of doing them from scratch. Now I know I might catch some flack for going with a mix but omg…it’s all premixed…stuff…and I get to toss in an unneeded egg and vanilla – viola! Pancakes! This wasn’t my first time making them from scratch – I’ve actually made some ass kickingly good blueberry pancakes from scratch so I still don’t know where I went wrong.

The recipe was from a favourite book of mine Emeril’s There’s Chef in My Soup…hmm...there might be a “Waiter,” in there somewhere…I don’t know and am waaaaaaay too bloody lazy to get up off my arse and look. I followed it to a T excepting that I used brown sugar instead of plain old white sugar. After letting it sit for 15 min (and what we accomplished in 15 min is a different story) we heated up our pan and were ready to make…

Crepes?? Like, omg – wtf???? Seriously guys, these things didn’t rise, they were luquidy and they tasted of funked up disaster. Till the Elfling said it wasn’t very sweet…or tasting. It was like…eating eggy goodness without any flavour. A lil more (pure, pristine – WHITE) sugar later and we had…more CREPES…only they were flavourful now. *shrugs* Who knows, go figure.

Anyhow, they didn’t turn out to be too bad. If I’d known I was making crepes instead of pancakes, I would have thawed some strawberries for them. Instead we schmeared on coconut syrup and rolled them up.

So in conclusion Emeril Pancake Recipe:

Awful for pancakes

Great for Crepes

Insomniac Bloggery Anyone?

So it's 240am and here I am.  Sitting the dark.  Sweating my arse off.  Blogging.

Well...kinda, at least.  I took a moment to check the temp. on my way here and found that it's still about 80 degrees in here.  Goddamn that's hot!  It was actually that hot at 5am yesterday when I came stumbling down.  So you can probably guess what kind of day I had.  

It's actually been a kinda wierd last couple weeks.  For those of you who don't keep up with the world around you there's been a bit of a hysteria over the swine flu.  I'll admit, it was a blip on my personal radar till 2 kids at the local high school caught it.  After the 3rd student, they actually shut down that high school and soon the entire district was down.  Yadda-yadda-yadda - we come tonight, I'm sleepless in San Antonio and my kids (thank the gods!) have school in the morning.

Speaking of which, i should make brownies.  You know since it's only 80 degrees in here.  (:

Won't You Take Me To....Funky Town?

And I ain't talkin' about a good sort of funky, either. It was rather bright and early Friday morning when the Diva and I took off to run some errands in town. Around these parts Friday means trash day and we have alternating green and black trash weeks. Unfortunately it was green trash day meaning the streets were lined with cans holding two weeks worth of...shall we say...composting stuff. Now while this lil fae's all about the composting happiness (if you're into it), she does NOT like to smell it downwind....especially if it smells like horse too.

First place we hit was the bank! Now, I'll have to admit, I prolly have more quirks than socially acceptable and one of them is that when nervous, I try to stick with the known which is why I went straight for the cashier I knew. Her look of surprise was most satisfying when I whipped out my (Well, E's) account card thing, saving time and thus getting me back out on the street!

I've been blessed with a child who has these moments where she'll want to try different fruits and veg and this week she selected an avocado to try. I don't know about you, but I can't do avocado straight up so our next venture in town was the local fruit and veg market. I've walked by this place a billion times but up until now, I've never actually gone in. It seems to be run by some lovely people, one who actually spoke English - which wound up confusing me as I went between bad French and even worse German before finding my tounge. Despite my own gooberishness, I walked away a happy woman and the Diva came home one apple richer.

So look - I included a picture! I went in look for lime for my avocado salad but just had to pick up some garlic too. It's sad when you can say getting a decent head of garlic is a treat - I usually have the worst luck at the commissary so this one was a real treat! The raspberries were just calling out to...well...both of us. Alas, in the end, I think I got two berries and a half eaten one from the bunch. *le sigh* As you can tell from above, this trip also included a stop at the bäckerei. I have absolutely no idea what the pastry or bread is called. I'd assume the pastry is a chocolate tipped almond horseshoe thingie - the teensy bite I had found it to be flaky with an übersweet inside. The bread might be something rye...or wheat....who knows? (:

Moving on to salad prep, I'll have to admit - I don't know what the hell actually goes into an avocado salad. Knowing my luck it involves pureeing the poor thing to death before adding it to jello, thus making it some sort of abomination that, when cut, slithers off the plate to devour the unsuspecting family. But as for me, after a brief game of "toss the avocado pit till it hits the kitchen window and freaks us all out" with the Diva, I hacked up the actual flesh before gleefully drowning it in the blood of one lime. I tossed in garlic that I hesitate to call minced....though I suppose you could say that's what I attempted and added a sprinkling of salt and deluge of pepper. Oh and i tossed with with just a touch of olive oil. And halved cherry tomatoes cause it seemed like the honourable thing to do.

The Diva gave it a noble try - I think she managed about 3 tiny bites before abandoning it to the corner of her plate. As for me...like the lil piggy I can be, I gobbled mine down for like the next five meals.
So that was last Friday, I hate to admit. I took my stupid lil pics and just couldn't bear to post without them. What does this Friday bring us? Black trashcan day and a less smelly neighbourhood. (: