Diary of a Lesbian Housewyfe

First, a quick update on the balloons. Nada. Nothing. Went out early with Cappy and my camera and got a dozen cute pictures of him and the cats, but only one really far away balloon. Bleah! They moved the site last year, so you really can’t see them from downtown anymore. Later in the day, a friend reminded me of that fact.

So, later that same day, I went out to our local hardware store and picked up some jars for jellies and jams. My CSA is finally ponying up with the fruit bounty and our first one had arrived: Cherries and Apricots. My sweet honey bunny grabbed the cherries, but I managed to make a batch of apricot jam and an apricot and cherry crisp (although I had to go get frozen cherries to do it! I must admit, those cherries are really, really tasty.).

Jam and jelly and preserves and butters are my summer passion these days. Last year, I managed to put away enough to do Christmas presents and hostess gifts. Sometimes I think that people would rather have something else, but my time feels so valuable and the love and good energy that gets stored in those little jars seem really special, so jams and jellies and preserves and butters are what people get for now. At least until they get less picky about what they wear and I can start crocheting and knitting for them.

Yes, most of them already have afghans and scarves.

Except Lucy. And she’s moving north. Hmmmmm……..

Anyway, last week I really started working on preserving with the apricot jam. Since then, I’ve made raspberry freezer jam, grapefruit freezer jelly and a whole buttload of blueberry jam, and I have 20 lbs of sweet cherries waiting for me to preserve them. I’ve been considering my possibilities, and I’ve settled on a few techniques. Since they are so fresh and wonderful, I thought I’d just pit and freeze a couple of batches for pies later in the winter. A freezer jam from them would be yummy too, and Sure-Jell has a recipe so I’m going to give that a try. Finally, I have a couple of recipes for preserves that I’m going to frankenstein together and see what comes out.

When I’m working with an easy fruit to deal with (ie. perfectly ripe stone fruits or berries), then I can pump out a batch before I come in to work. Creating something like that so early in my day makes me feel proud since I’ve already accomplished something. Plus, the task usually only takes an hour. Ahhh…. Easy and fulfilling. My favorite type of chore.

Cherries are daunting. Cherries need to be pitted. Therefore, I haven’t gotten around to working with the cherries yet, and Lord only knows what’s coming in this week. I only get about 8 hours to prepare myself before my bounty arrives and I’ve done poorly this week at getting rid of the last week’s haul.

So, tonight I will be making a fabulous supper with a big healthy salad and pitting cherries afterwards. Let’s see how far I get.

Woo-hoo! Pitting cherries. Just what I dreamed I would be doing when I was a little girl.

Friday, work started late (4PM) so we could keep the cafe open late. I walked in the door and immediately started making the next batch of oatmeal cookies.

Pecan, Butterscotch, Dried Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies. No chocolate, no raisins.

Yummy! I’m pretty proud because I’ve been known to obsess over recipes for weeks and months. Someday I’ll tell you about the Sourdough Saga.

For now, the recipe:

Pecan, Butterscotch & Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

Beat until creamy. Add:

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Beat well. Combine:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

pinch nutmeg

Add to butter mixture and mix well. Stir in:

2 1/2 cups oatmeal

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup chopped toasted pecans (I toasted mine for five minutes at 425 degrees and then chopped them roughly)

1/4 cup butterscotch morsels

Form into little cookie burgers (for my 3 oz cookies, they ended up being about 3 inches across and 1/4 inch thick before cooking. For regular sized cookies, I’d just smash down a couple of tablespoons of dough.) and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes. Cool one minute on the sheet before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

I’m thinking that they won’t last too long, if my customers are anything to go by. I haven’t had to throw any away so far.

If you have read my post on Baby Socks, you know that my obsessions can be both mundane and comprehensive (meaning I indulge in thoughts of them all the time.) Now, time for some cookies….

Yep. Here are three of the cookies that I made today. And here are the problems:

To my regular oatmeal cookie recipe, I added dried cranberries and dried blueberries. The combination tastes like… well, raisins. I don’t want these cookies to have raisin flavor.

Now, a lot of people might say, “why not raisins?”

To them, I reply, “I don’t like raisins.”

And they reply, “So what? I don’t like lots of things, but I still cook them for my family/wyfe/colleagues/husbynd.”

During high school, for about a year, this african-american woman cleaned our house once a week. That same day, she would make a dinner for us. I believe this was my mother’s saving grace during this period.

This woman made such good food. I especially remember the green beans with pork. Oh my God. That was a dish worth thanking the good Lord for. If you’ve ever lived or visited the south, you’ve probably eaten these beans. They show up at every potluck and on the holiday table and, for some lucky people, when company shows up. I asked her why her food tasted better than other people’s, hoping for some trick to the recipe.

She replied, “I don’t make anything that I don’t like.”

Well, that just blew my little sixteen year old mind. Not cooking anything that you don’t like? How could I do that?

I finally found the answer: You just don’t cook anything that you don’t like. If you’re cooking something to which you have an aversion, just figure out how to make it so it tastes good to you.

She probably didn’t even have a high school diploma. One of the smartest people I ever met.

They don’t spread like I thought they would.

No biggie. I just pressed them out with the heel of my hand and made big “oatmeal cookie burgers.” Still the right taste.

The cookie is just a good cookie. Not outstanding.

I want a great cookie, and I’m a little obsessed with that idea. Here’s what I’m going to do:

Only one fruit - dried cranberries.

Butterscotch Chips.

Toasted Pecans.

I’ll let you know how that turns out.

This year, my sweet honey-bunny and I signed up for one of those Community Supported Agriculture programs. This fire-breathing fellow here in town decided to get a bunch of people together and I fell into it backwards. Woo-hoo! So, he drives down to Palisade, Colorado once a week and picks up everyone’s food, and then we go to a central location and pick it up.

I missed the first two pickups since I visited my mother, but this past Tuesday, I finally got to go. I got lettuce and cabbage and squash and turnip greens and chard and herbs. I think tonight I’m going to make my squash fritters for dinner. My goal is to create at least one meal a week from only these ingredients.

Last night, my meal plan included chicken breasts and a chinese cabbage salad. I was all ready to go, and went to the crisper.

Now, last week my sweet honey-bunny went to pick up the veggies as she had done the week before. When I got home, she told me everything that was in the crisper, and I didn’t do too much digging to confirm any identities. The radishes were round and oblong and lovely. The lettuce made several beautiful salads. I’d never worked with kohlrabi or chinese cabbage before, so my sweet honey-bunny pulled a couple of recipes. I made a Kohlrabi and Green Apple Salad with Creamy Mustard Dressing over the weekend and that worked out very well. I need to make some adjustments the next time I get kohlrabi - just felt like there was something missing - but that’s pretty usual for the first time I make a recipe.

Last night, I thought I’d finish up last week’s crop with a Thai Chinese Cabbage Salad. I felt it would work fine with my plain old chicken breasts and complete my process. Imagine my surprise when I pulled bok choy out of the crisper.

Me: This is bok choy.

Sweet Honey-Bunny: Bok choy is chinese cabbage.

Me: Bok choy is one type of chinese cabbage. Not the type you were thinking of though.

SHB: (tired) Oh. Can you do something else?

In my mind, I screamed, “Do something else? I have approximately half a bushel of lemongrass, jalapeno peppers and limes in the crisper especially for this salad! How am I ever going to use it up? How could you make this mistake? Can’t you see the difference between bok choy and chinese cabbage?”

Out loud, I said, “Of course. I’ll just make the usual.” Which is fine and was fine and tasted great and went perfectly with my usual preparation of my boring chicken breasts.

And this week, I’m turning the plain old regular cabbage that we got into a chinese cabbage. It’s going to be great!

Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with the bok choy.

Chocolate Stout Cake. Yummy? Yes. Pretty? Finally. Exploding? And how.

I decided to make some cupcakes to test the recipe, and set about assembling the ingredients: Guinness, butter (1 pound!), eggs (4!), sour cream (over 1 cup!), flour, baking soda, sugar (4 cups!). As I mixed and simmered and warmed and creamed, the batter grew and grew and grew. Soon, I had approximately one (1) metric buttload of chocolatey goodness sitting before me and only 24 little cupcake papers to put it in.

I grew cautious. I only filled the cupcake papers halfway and still had about 1/2 the batter to go. I buttered and papered a deep cake pan and put in the rest of the batter. None of my containers were filled more than 2/3rds of the way. A false sense of hope settled my soul as I fit them all into my 350 degree preheated oven. I set the timer for 15 minutes and began to wash up.

After 15 minutes, the dishes were done. The cupcakes were puffing beautifully, although the cake batter was only bubbling in the pan. Nothing done yet, but looking promising.

10 more minutes sent me running back to the oven, convinced I’d find beautiful cupcakes with burned bottoms. The result was actually worse than that. Imagine 24 small volcanoes dripping chocolate lava. Thank God I had put the cupcakes in a muffin tin!

Suddenly the bubbling cake batter became menacing. But it only needed about 10 more minutes of cooking or so said the recipe. I was beginning to suspect that this recipe was a lying fiend who tormented home cooks in the 23rd ring of hell. I set the timer again, put a cookie sheet under the cake pan to catch the possible overflow and occupied myself with knitting baby socks while waiting for my certain doom.

Doom came slowly. At least a half-hour after the time allotted, I finally pulled a cake batter coated pan out of the oven. My last toothpick was coated with wet crumbs, but I couldn’t stand the burned chocolate smell of the batter lining the cookie sheet any longer. I set the cake on a rack and let it cool for ten minutes in the pan before turning it out.

Flat. Three hours of my life and at least twenty dollars in ingredients sat flat and moist on the cake rack cooling. I contemplated the conundrum as I cleaned up the oven. I had a couple of different choices, and finally settled on a cover-up.

This morning, I mixed up a quick frosting from mascarpone cheese, vanilla and confectioner’s sugar. On top of that, I deposited a thin layer of chopped toffee bits (Enstroms - Yum!). All that was left was a beautiful presentation on one of our glass-domed cake plates and the cake became a wonder to behold. Now for the title to enchant customers to buy a piece of cake…..

Exploding Cover-Up Cake. I guess I’ll dedicate this one to the current executive branch.