The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BABY SISTER!!!!

We called her house earlier this morning so the kids could sing to her.  No audio, but here's a picture.  Happy Birthday, Meredith!! 

The cat was indifferent.

Sleepless for the Sox

We stayed up for the whole game. 

I'd been up since 4:22 in the morning yesterday (yes, it's that precise) because Julia, (who else?) had been awake and I hadn't seen the whole game the night before (Saturday night's game) because we were so far ahead and because I was falling asleep on the couch.  So I stayed up with Julia from 4:22 on because I was trying to find a news channel or sports channel that would just give me the score.  That didn't happen til after 6:00.  And yes, I could have just gone online, but Julia and I were snuggled up nice and cozy on the couch, and I didn't feel like moving except to press buttons on the remote.

Anyway (and be warned, I will ramble off in many directions as I babble away this morning), last night Bill and I were in it for the long haul.  Because - this could be IT!  So we watched and cheered and occasionally, as the game went on, dozed off for a few minutes - him in the big chair, curled up like a contortionist to fit all 6'2" of him comfortably, and me on the couch, stretched out and comfortable. 

And then it was the 7th inning.  And the 8th.  And I swear there were like 850 commercials played in between innings or at the halfway point or whenever there was a pitching change.  The same commercials.  Again and again.  And we were both just begging for the game to come back on so we could prop our eyelids open and watch and be one step closer to winning and to sleep.

And it was so NERVE WRACKING!!!  A one run lead was not a COMFORTABLE lead. 

And then it was the bottom of the ninth.  And we were wide awake and I was perched on the edge of the couch, leaning forward toward the TV as though somehow that would help.  After the first out, I snuck a quick look at Bill and his eyes met mine, and then we both looked away, like this might jinx it.  Same thing after the second out.  So close....so close....   

May I just state right now that I am in love with so many of our guys.  I was just yelling it at them - like an idiot girly fan.  But whatever.  They can't hear me.  I can be an idiot if I want.  But not that girly - I'm in love with how they play.  How HARD they play.

And then - down to the last out.  The last strike.  And - there it was.  At 12:06 by our clock.

WE WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was off the couch and jumping up and down - in a crouch, because the ceiling in the basement is kind of low, and can you imagine that?  Knocking myself out like that?  It would be kind of funny.  Eventually.

Anyway.  We watched a bit longer, watched them show all the players, all the camera shots, as the realization hit them all and those cautious, waiting expressions just fell away and they were all leaping up and down with joy.  I could watch that again and again.  I couldn't stop smiling and laughing. 

And then - it just figures, doesn't it?  Julia woke up.  WIDE awake.

I said it in 2004 when she would wake me up during the postgame season to see miracles happen at weird hours of the night - she is a Fan.  And I say it again.  She must have sensed that we won, and she just wanted to be a part of it. 

So I brought her downstairs, and we snuggled together, wrapped in a blanket, and watched, for a while longer, the jumping up and down and the champagne flying everywhere and the ecstatic expressions on the faces of these phenomenal men - and the little boys inside of them who still can't quite believe that they get to do this for a living.

At least that's how they looked to me.

9 Pounds, 14.5 Ounces

Our Giant Pumpkin, 2007.

Easy Herb Batter Bread - (the first bread I learned to make)

My mom belonged to a local garden club when I was a kid - and well beyond that, actually.  They did a lot to make the town look nice - the trees planted along main street were their doing, for instance.  "Project Beautification" is a program I seem to remember...

Anyway, another project one year was a little cookbook called Indian Run Gardeners Cook Book.  The name "Indian Run" refers (if memory serves) to a little brook that runs parallel to part of Route 108 near Old Mountain Field.  All the members of the club provided a menu and at least one recipe for that menu. 

Here's the cover of my copy. 

 

The books were "bound" with green yarn looped through the two holes in the side.  Yesterday I went crazy looking for my book.  I was scanning my cookbook shelves, just looking for that green yarn.  Couldn't find it.  It's a skinny book, so I thought it was just hiding.  But no...not where it should be.  Not where it might be.  WHERE WAS IT????  I felt a sense of panic.  This is a little snippet of my childhood, this little book.  It represents, on some level, a lot of who my mother was to me at that time.  The cooking and the gardening parts of her. 

It's not that I needed the bread recipe it contained.  I have it written down elsewhere, and I could probably recreate it from memory if I had to.  But I wanted the book itself.  I wanted to scan the cover and a couple of the pages into the computer to use in this post.  But beyond that - IT SHOULD BE HERE - WHERE IS IT???

I finally found the poor thing.  The green yarn is gone.  The front and back cover are separated from the stapled body of the book.  The whole thing was shoved to the back of a shelf, hidden by bigger hard-covered books.  I was so glad to find it.  No matter how many other stuffed animals she has, Julia wants her pink elephant at bedtime, and if the elephant's not in her bed, the house is turned upside down and inside out in order to find the pink elephant.  That's kind of how my search for this little book felt.

Anyway.  You can see the year at the bottom of that page above.  1977.  I don't remember what time of year the book was put together, but anyway, I was about eleven or twelve when it was "in production." (yes.  so you can do the math.  yuck.)

And for whatever reason, I was called upon to do an illustration for the book.  I had taken art classes for some time, maybe that was why.  I don't remember.  But here it is:

I don't know how PC it is now, but of course it's a nod to the name of the club, the name of that brook, and so that is what I was asked to draw.  I think it's funny.  The fact that this probably wouldn't be done now...that the whole thing would be done on a computer and photos of the club members and maybe scenic shots of the towns and gardens would fill the gaps in between text passages.  The book would be spiral bound and would have plastic-coated cover pages.  Very polished and professional...but lacking a bit of the charm of the pre-computer age.

This is my mom's page:

The little hand-written measurements beside the typed ones are mine - I must have halved the recipe for some reason at some point. 

This, as I said in the post title, is the first bread I learned to make.  I can see in my mind the brown earthenware bowl with warm water in it...the dry yeast sprinkled on top.  I remember mixing the ingredients with a wooden spoon, and the smell of the yeast and the herbs blending together.  And I remember the sense of surprise and satisfaction when the dough doubled in size - just like it was supposed to!  I did it right!  And, best of all, I remember the taste of that first slice - always cut sooner than recommended, well before the loaf had cooled.  This is a taste of childhood, of home, and of memories of warm kitchens on chilly afternoons over all these years.

I've moderned things up a bit - I used my monster toy - my 6 qt Kitchenaid Mixer - instead of a bowl and a wooden spoon.  But no matter how you combine ingredients - the aroma will be the same.  Swoon-inducing.

Shall we?

The first thing you want to do is assemble the ingredients.  Here we have all the small things - left to right in the back row - yeast, sugar, salt and shortening.  Front row - dried oregano, dried thyme, and fresh basil.  I didn't have any dried.  If you're switching between dry and fresh, the equivalency ratio is about a teaspoon of dry to a tablespoon of fresh.  The flavor is more concentrated in the dry so you would need more fresh to compensate, as I did in this case.  Fortunately, we still have a ton of basil out there.

The other two ingredients are water and flour.

You put two cups of warm water into your mixing bowl, and sprinkle the yeast on top.  Whisk the yeast in so it's all combined with the water.  Then leave it alone for a bit.

You want to give the yeast time to prove that it's still active.  Those bubbles in the picture above are just froth from when I whisked the yeast and water together.  They will pop. 

Now yeah, there are still bubbles, but they're not all because of me any more.  See that thicker looking section of tan?  That's the wet yeast, and it's producing some of these bubbles now.  Once this has happened, go ahead and add in the other "small" ingredients except for the salt.  (Salt can kill or slow down the yeast, so add that along with flour next.) 

Now, yesterday when I was doing all this, I had just made some coffee and Bill asked if I wanted to go outside and look at what's still growing.  So, mugs of coffee in hand (and me with a camera, just in case) we went outside and looked around.  We still have tomatoes, zucchini, various peppers, and a VERY late-bloomer of a giant pumpkin.  I figured the batter would be okay for a few minutes without me.

And it was - it was more than okay - it was pretty busy, actually.  Here's what I saw when we came back inside:

Pretty cool, huh?  I hadn't even fully combined it yet - you can see the chunk of shortening up on the top left behind the paddle.

Stir that down...

and then add the flour...

Two cups first (and the salt)...

and so on, a cup or so at a time...

until

it looks like that.

Now, push the mixer speed up a notch or two and let it run for a few minutes to develop some of the gluten.

It's never going to look like dough - as the recipe tells you, it's a batter bread.  It's not going to develop the same structure and texture as a bread that you knead.  Just keep that in mind.

Now that it's all combined nicely, you want to scrape the batter into a lightly oiled bowl,

cover it with plastic wrap,

and set aside to rise.

The recipe says to let rise until doubled in bulk - about 40 minutes.  So I wrote down the time when I covered the batter, and kept an eye on the clock.

40 minutes later (give or take a minute)...

and you can see through the plastic that the batter has expanded.

See?

Next, you want to stir it down...

like so, and then scrape it into a standard (9 x 5 x 5) loaf pan (which you have lightly greased first) and cover.  (* It's probably a good idea to lightly oil the plastic wrap you cover the batter with, because otherwise when you remove the plastic before baking, the plastic will pull the batter and wreck some of the height and structure.  I should know, heh heh.)

Here it is before you cover it.  You should also preheat the oven at this time.  375 degrees F.

The top of this batter should look better - smoother and higher than it does.  Remember what I said about not wanting your plastic to stick?  Here's why.  It's still got some height, but it could look a little better.  Oh, and that pan?  That's not dirty - it's seasoned.

Put the pan on a rack in the middle of the oven and set your timer for about 25 minutes.  Some ovens run hot, others run cold...you want to check on it before anything unfixable happens.

Here's mine at about the 25 minute mark:

You can see the lovely height it has now - when it goes into the oven, all the little pockets of air inside expand with steam from the moisture in the batter.  So in addition to the rising the batter does before it goes into the oven, the sudden exposure to heat gives it that extra boost.  The top is golden, but the sides are still white and the whole thing is rather squishy inside.  If you took it out now, it would collapse on itself.  And it wouldn't be cooked.  So you'd have a lump of gush with a pretty hat on it.

I let mine go for another 20 minutes all together, and when I took it out, here's how it looked:

The crust is a nice brown now, and the sides (though you can't see them in this shot) are browned too. 

Here's the very top, close up:

Don't you wish you had a scratch-n-sniff monitor screen right about now?

And here's a view from below:

Another thing to keep in mind when you're trying to decide if the bread is ready to come out of the oven is the bottom of the loaf.  If you think it's ready, tip the bread out of the pan (onto your hand with an oven mitt on it or something - don't burn yourself in the process!)   You want to tap the bottom of the loaf with your fingers, and if it sounds hollow, you're good to go.  It's also a tactile thing - the bottom should be crusty - not quite as crisp as the top because it's been sitting inside the pan amid all the heat and humidity...but it should feel firm and finished.  If you tap on it and you don't feel a crispness, if it feels and sounds more like you're tapping a hunk of cheese, then put the bread back in the oven.  You need to bake it longer.

Now, the hardest part for me - ALWAYS - is waiting the right amount of time before slicing it.  If you slice into it right away, you'll be tearing the bread rather than slicing through it.  The innards are still steamy and damp, and they'll just stick to your knife.  So you're supposed to let the bread cool.

This is far easier said than done if, like me, you lack willpower in the presence of starch.

I waited as long as I could, and then I cut a slice:

It was still kind of wet inside, and there was some pulling against the blade, but not too, too badly. 

Want a closer look at the inner structure?  Here -

Structurally it's weaker than homemade bread from kneaded dough.  The shortening and sugar in the batter help soften it as well.  I'm thinking it I'd let the mixer work on it longer, more of the gluten would have developed.  So next time I'll let it go for a while.  But still - it's a batter, not a dough.  It's wetter and softer.   

Alas, I have no more pictures of the bread.  In fact, I have very little of the bread left at all.  My family (me included) descended on it like vultures on a zebra carcass, and there's only a little bit remaining wrapped up on the counter. 

The bread makes excellent toast to go along with your eggs over easy, in case you were wondering. 

You can change the herb combination if you want - one time I put in Bell's poultry seasoning - it was like a slice of Thanksgiving dinner.  You can also leave out the herbs all together and make a nice loaf of white bread. 

Anyway, this is the first kind of bread I learned to make.  It was easy, and yummy, and I've made a lot of it over the years.  If you've never made bread before, give it a shot. 

Your house will smell fabulous.

Father and Daughter Stuff

Don't know if I ever mentioned this before, but when I was pregnant with Julia - before we knew she was a she - Bill firmly believed (or hoped desperately) that our next child would be another boy.  Because, according to him, his side of the family only produced boys.  The oldest of the three brothers had two sons.  The middle brother had - well, a son...and a daughter.  But somehow she was dismissed as a fluke, and we were bound to have another boy.  According to my husband.

I didn't care one way or another - I was just looking for a healthy baby.  If it was another boy - fine, they could share a room and toys and hand-me-downs.  If it was a girl - fine, we'd eventually need to figure out the bedroom situation, but in the meantime, they could share a room and toys and hand-me-downs. 

When I was somewhere around the half-way point, we went in for an ultrasound to find out if the baby was developing okay and (Bill's choice) to find out the gender.  I got my way with Alex - I didn't want to know.  So, to be fair, if Bill wanted to know this time, that was okay. 

I remember lying on the table twisting my neck around to see the screen during the ultrasound.  I loved ultrasounds.  I loved seeing the tiny creature growing inside me.  Didn't love the two ultrasounds that gave me bad news, of course.  But this was now, and my baby was growning and moving and - presumably - healthy.  The woman doing the ultrasound was a pro - quick and efficient and calm.  She showed us various bones and said everything was developing normally, everything looked good, right on track, and so forth.

And then - "Did you want to know the sex?"  Yep.  She was silent for a moment as she moved the scope around, and then - "It's a girl."  Not open to discussion or debate.  She was certain.

I burst out laughing.  Healthy, first and foremost, and - a girl.  I looked over at Bill who, fortunately, was sitting in a chair to my left, not standing.  If he had been standing before the announcement, he would have been falling at the word "girl."  I know it's a cliche, but he really had that deer in the headlights look about him.  I laughed more.  The radiologist pointed out the proof - where something might have been right there between the legs, it very clearly wasn't in this picture.  And she'd been doing this for something like 20 years, so even though there was certainly a possibility that she'd be wrong, she was pretty damn sure she was right.

Bill continued to look shell-shocked for the whole drive home, and remained terrified for the rest of the pregnancy.  And several months after Julia was born.  She didn't have boy stuff, she had girl stuff, and girl stuff is scary to men who think they will only father sons.

He got over it, in a way, though I think there is still a part of him that will always be terrified of having a daughter.  Not so much because of her, but because fathering a daughter is a whole different ballgame from fathering a son. 

As another Bill sang in "Carousel" - "You can have fun with a son, but you gotta be a father to a girl."

It's scary stuff.

Flash forward a few years. 

This morning is foggy and occasionally rainy.  A slight breeze sways the treetops, but otherwise all is calm, still.  A perfect morning to go trout fishing.  Originally Bill was going to take both kids and give me uninterrupted time to type or whatever.  But Alex didn't want to.  I told Bill to go alone if he wanted to - I knew he was itching to go.  He went downstairs to get a couple of freshwater poles from the racks and a moment later, up came Julia with her pink Barbie pole. 

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm going fishing!" she announced, in her Dora underwear and her ruby slippers.  "I'm going fishing with Daddy!"  I told her she'd need a few more articles of clothing on first.

Bill came upstairs and, yep, he was taking Julia with him.

I used to go fishing with my father, and with his father.  I was Julia's age - Julia's age! - when I caught 14 choggies - little saltwater fish related to blackfish.  I seem to remember a photo of me standing with all my catch laid out on a cookie sheet or something.  I need to check with my father to see if he has a copy somewhere....

Anyway - this morning.

Bill got Julia dressed warmly and ready to go...

And I took pictures (big surprise) - because this is what I knew would happen, ever since that day in the radiologist's office when I laughed and Bill quaked.  Because this is the wonderful part of fathers and daughters. 

And I know - it's not always like this.  I'm doubly blessed - as a daughter, and now, watching my own daughter and her father. 

Take your daughter fishing.  Teach her to use a hammer and a screwdriver and a saw and a wrench...and how to throw overhand and how to catch with a glove, and how to catch a football and how to shuck scallops and clams and oysters, and how to bait a hook and gut a fish.  Or to play guitar.  Or whatever.

Not that mothers can't teach their daughters these things as well.  Of course they can.  But I'm not talking about that right now.

I'm just smiling here, to myself, because my baby girl and my husband have gone fishing.

And though neither one of them may realize it right now, or for many years, these are special, precious, important times.

  You can have fun with a daughter, too.

Pickled Peppers

From my sister.

Tag, I'm It...8 Things You Don't (or Might Not) Know About Me

Leigh over at Red Pony Farm tagged me yesterday, so here goes.  I wanted to think about it a bit first, but the World Series is preventing me from much independent thinking right now.  And from sleep.

So here goes....

1.  I used to want to be a private detective.  My best friend and I (we were around 11 or so, I guess) had our own detective agency, complete with a sign on the door. 

2.  I have a scar just below my left knee from a bicycle accident that occurred while on my paper route a week before I turned 13.  I had 6 stitches.  I watched the whole thing - very cool.

3.  I was a vegetarian for nearly a year.  I passed up lobster...but I couldn't make it through Thanksgiving and Christmas meatlessly.

4.  Before I was old enough to get a driver's license, I had an idea of what I wanted my first car to look like.  I didn't know what make or model, but I wanted it to be red on the hood, then blend into purple, and then blend into blue at the trunk. 

5.  The first time I ever flew anywhere, I was in college, going to visit a friend in Texas.  The first leg landed in Austin.  As we were descending, motion sickness got me and I threw up into my hands.  (Yes, there was someone sitting next to me.  No one I knew.)  A flight attendant came by and asked if I was all right, and I sort of held up my vomity hands as an offering (evidence that no, I wasn't all right) and she recoiled, handed me an airsick bag and hurried away.  She came by again a bit later, after I'd cleaned up, and this time I held out the bag for her, but no, she didn't want to touch that, either.  I threw it away in the bathroom myself.  It was a mortifying and disgusting experience.  Fortunately, it hasn't ever happened again.

6.  When I was a kid, I once stepped on a dead baby bird that had fallen out of a tree in our yard.  The bird was covered with dirt, for the most part.  I still remember the odd squishy feel of its stomach under my sneaker.

7.  I don't like cauliflower. 

8.  I really like McDonalds cheeseburgers.

There.  That's what I can come up with this morning.  I hope it was exciting and enlightening for you all. 

Time to go get my kids ready for school and daycare.  And me ready for work.

You know, I'm really looking forward to the end of November.

OktoberFeast - Part 4 - the Spaetzle

In my slowly continuing recap of a meal we put together for Oct 13th, here is the 4th recipe I'm posting.

You can see the others here:

OktoberFeast - Part 1 - the Sauerkraut

OktoberFeast - Part 2 - the Onion Cake

OktoberFeast - Part 3 - the Sauerbraten

Today it's all about the Spaetzle.  Pronunciation of the word varies - some say "Spay-tsl" while Bill's mother said "speh-tchle" or something like that.  Whatever way you say it, spaetzle = comfort food.  Little freshly made noodles or dumplings (depending on how you make them - thin and noodly or thicker and dumplingy) tossed with gravy or even some butter - they are light, pillowy, starchy bites of goodness.

Anyway.  I have a feeling Bill's mom put the ingredients together from memory, though he says he saw a recipe.  I couldn't find it, but this is a good, workable ratio of ingredients:

2 eggs

2 tablespoons of freshly rendered lard (actually i think we used bacon fat, you can use oil if you want, or melted and cooled butter)

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup milk

2  1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Beat the first 4 ingredients (all the wet ingredients)together in a bowl.  In another bowl, stir together the last 3 ingredients (the dry ones).  Then blend the dry mixture into the wet mixture and set aside.  How easy is that?

Get a big pot of water boiling and add in some salt - about 2 teaspoons. 

Put the bowl of the spaetzle dough (actually, it's rather loose and more like a batter, to me, than a dough) near the stove.  You'll also want a slotted spoon handy, and a bowl to put the cooked spaetzle in.

Now here's the tricky part.  You can use a spaetzle press if you have one (we don't) or a ricer.  We tried the ricer:

but the batter was too thin and it all just smushed back together before it hit the water.  We tried a collander as well, with the same unsatisfactory result.  I suggested we add a little more flour to thicken it, but my idea was dismissed.  I still think it would have worked.  But what do I know.

So - it was back to basics time.

Bill's mom always used a spaetzlebrot or spaetzle board.  We have hers, and this is what it looks like:

Now, Bill's the one who has actually made the spaetzle, and so has his nephew, Joe.  Joe was here for the dinner that night, and since Bill had other things to attend to, he put Joe in charge of the spaetzle-making.  I believe you get the surface of the board a little wet, then put some of the dough/batter on about mid-way.  Then, with a knife, you smear some of the batter toward the front (the straight edge) and then slice it and shove it off the end into the boiling water.

See all the little knife lines on there? 

You work with a portion of the dough/batter at a time.  The spaetzle will sink to the bottom of the water initially, and when they float to the top, they are done.  Using your slotted spoon, scoop them out and place in a bowl while you make the next batch.

Unfortunately, I don't have any more pictures of that process.  I think I was probably putting the rest of the food on the table or taking knives out of Julia's hands or making faces behind Bill's back for ignoring my additional flour idea.  Something like that.  But I'll post this picture again of the table of food. 

Those two bowls on the right contain the spaetzle, mixed with some gravy from the sauerbraten.  My brother-in-law, Jacques, is helping himself to some of the spaetzle. 

We will make this again, and when we do, I'll take better pictures, or, actually, MORE pictures, so you can really see the process better. 

Next up - the scary foods.  I think. 

Five Minutes on the Sea Wall in Narragansett on Saturday Morning Just Before 10:00...

That's all for the moment. 

Just Call Me Charlotte

Yesterday we had a little Halloween party for our kids and some of Alex's friends.  I had them decorate halloween cookies, and originally I was going to have some sort of haunted part of the house with stuff to touch, like cold spaghetti for brains (or guts) and peeled grapes for eyeballs.

But Saturday I felt like I was coming down with something, and I really didn't have any desire to peel grapes.

So instead, I made a spider web in the back yard and then wove separate lengths of string from the gate through the web and ultimately to their little goodie bags hidden around the edges of the yard.

Here's the view from our second floor:

The original web was more web-like in appearance.  This is after I wove all the string mazes through it all.  The whole web was about chest high on me, so taller than Alex, and he's the tallest of the group of kids.  So no child was decapitated during the event.

And you know, it was the best fun, making this thing.  Especially the original web itself.  I was out there by myself laughing with delight.  (So I'm sure I looked like quite the lunatic to anyone walking by...) 

And it went pretty well, the game part.  It was a little frustrating for some of them, having to follow the strings and unloop them from the main web lines, but still, everyone ended up with chocolate eyeballs and spooky tattoos and rubber bats and spiders, so overall, the web maze was a success.

I actually thought of writing "Boo" or something in the web, but I didn't have enough string.  Maybe next year....