The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Pawsox Game and Fireworks

When I was in Junior High, there was a math teacher, Mrs. Smith, who was tiny and smart and tough.  She had a steely voice, steel-gray hair, and a no-nonsense, no fooling around attitude, tempered with a sense of humor that she allowed to peek out from behind her stern facade every now and then.  During class, when we'd work on problems out loud and she'd call on us for answers, if someone gave a very wrong answer, she'd kind of roll her eyes and tilt her head back a bit, like she was reeling from the awful wrongness of that student's attempted answer.  And she'd say, in that grim, steely voice "Ah, you're way out in Pawtucket!"  I went to school in the southern part of Rhode Island, and Pawtucket lies northeast of Providence, far, far from us.  (Relatively speaking.  It's Rhode Island, after all, and nothing is really THAT far from anything else.)  But that was her way of telling you just how VERY wrong you were.  So far off that you were way out in Pawtucket. 

And that's where the family and I were the other day.  Way out in Pawtucket.

On Thursday we went to a Pawtucket Red Sox game with friends of ours, their son (Alex's best friend since they were about a year old or something) and another little boy.  We went for free, courtesy of "family four-packs" of tickets given away by Dave's Marketplace.

It was one of two special nights that included early start times and post-game fireworks.  We went last year, so we HAD to go this year.

The cool thing (to me) was that Clay Buchholz was scheduled to pitch.  Woo hoo!  Go Sox!

Even cooler - we won!

And cooler still, we had pretty good seats.  We were kind of behind/to the side of the press box, so we were behind home plate, off to the first base side a bit.  I had (because my husband and our friends are kind) a great seat - the press box didn't obscure my view of the field at all, so I could take pictures.  We were way up in the nosebleed seats, but still, it was a great view of the game.

The other thing to note - we've had so much rain (I know I've mentioned that before) lately, that up until a couple hours before game time, we weren't even sure if there would be a game at all.  Amazingly, just before we headed to Pawtucket, the sun came out and the sky cleared, and we actually had good weather for the game.

There was still always the threat of rain - I kept taking pictures of the sky as the evening went on, just to track the cloudy status.  But though the sky became overcast, the rain never fell, and the evening rolled along as planned.  Yay!

Anyway, the kids had a great time - three little boys all around the 7-year mark, giddy and goofy and feeding off each others' wild energy...plus one five-year-old girl who can hold her own with the boys - except when the fireworks start. 

Julia cried through the whole fireworks display last year.  This year she cried and was calling "Mommy!  Mommy!" at the start (on Bill's lap - I got to take pictures pretty much uninterrupted this year) and he said she stopped crying after a bit but kept her hands firmly in place over her ears.  Then, once the show was done and we were starting to leave, she saw me and started crying again.  Because I hadn't been witness to it the first time, I guess, and she needed to let me know how unhappy she'd been.

Anyway, a fun time was had by all, and during the ride home Julia fell asleep almost before we were out of the parking lot at McCoy Stadium.  The boys, all three of them buckled in in the very back seat, were overtired and wired during the ride home.  They became more and more giggly during the ride, and Alex fell asleep pretty much as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Pictures are here.

When Creative Outlets Collide

Several (or more - I've lost track) weeks ago I got it into my head that it would be fun to make braided rugs.  I've got all sorts of fabric stockpiled from when I used to quilt a lot, and I "inherited" fabric from my late maternal grandmother, who also quilted and sewed clothes for us when we were little and appreciated home-made clothing.  She also knitted and crocheted and drew and painted and played piano.  Oh - and she also made some rugs.  There was a great big braided rug under the kitchen table, for one...and I remember she also dabbled in rag rugs - the knotted kind that are shaggy on top and bumpy on the bottom. 

Anyway, I thought - hey!  I know how to braid!  I'll braid some rugs! 

Of course, all this burst into my head after we'd started the whole Renovate the Bedrooms project, when all my big green Rubbermaid Totes O' Fabric had been dragged into the kids' room and stacked BEHIND a ton of other stuff.  Stuff I'd need to move waaaaay out of the way in order to access my fabric stash.

But no matter.  I was determined!  I was inspired!  I was probably procrastinating about something, too, so naturally I was very enthusiastic about THIS new idea and less so about whatever else I should have been doing.

So one day I heaved and hoed (ho'd?) and managed to drag those Totes O' Fabric into the hall and down two flights of stairs into the basement, where I'd decided to set up shop. 

I lead a kind of nomadic creative life in this house.  I would love to just have one room for ME and all my Totes O' Stuff, but alas, that ain't gonna happen.

Anyway, I got the totes downstairs, and set up a banquet table to work on.  I also brought down my jewelry-making stuff so I could dabble in that as well.  And my sewing machine.  The ironing board and iron were already down there so I could keep Bill appropriately wrinkle-free for work.

I dug through bushels of fabric - cottons, cotton blends, corduroy, satin, velvet, and wool.  Aha!  Wool!  That's what they braid rugs with, right?

I also discovered - to my delight - that I had a more varied supply of wool than I'd thought.  All I could really remember were lengths of dark gray, red, and a medium gray pinstripe - wools I'd used back in college when I decided I could make some clothes for myself.  I also ended up making some really warm quilt tops out of some of the scraps.  I have no idea what happened to any of that stuff - the skirts or the quilts.  It was all several lifetimes ago....

Anyway, so all I thought I had were two grays and a red.  They'd look nice together, but I kind of wished I had more splashes of color.  Turns out I did.  There were other blacks and grays...some blue and black large-square gingham pattern...and a yellow that my grandmother had used decades ago to make me a cape/poncho kind of thing - it buttoned up the front and had slits in the sides for my arms - and a matching beret. 

So, in short, I had more parts of a rainbow than I'd thought.  Good. 

And so I washed my wools.  And dried them.  In the dryer.

Yes - I did.  Because if there were any dyes that might run, I wanted them to run NOW, and not some day in the future when they were braided with other colors and running might result in black dye bleeding into yellow.  And I wanted the wools to go ahead and shrink if they wanted to.  But do it NOW, while you're all separate, and not later, when you're braided together into one size and come out later fit only for a doll house.

That was my reasoning.

And as they came out I folded them all neatly and stacked them in color-coordinated piles and placed them on top of a tote.

And I moved on to denim.

Because I ALSO had thougth it would be cool to use denim for a rug.  And I'd been saving old jeans, lower-leg portions of the kids' pants (once holes in the knees had convinced me to transform the jeans into shorts) for SOMETHING.  Didn't know what, but maybe a quilt?  I didn't know.  I just stashed them.  Because I am genetically predisposed to do so.

Anyway, after I'd washed all the jeans (not that there was any dye left to run anywhere), I started in with the scissors.  I cut up leg after leg after leg, ridding myself of seams and zippers and waistbands.  But not the back pockets.  For whatever pack-rat reason, I have saved all the back pockets.  For something.  SOMETHING.

And once all the legs had been trimmed of hem and seam and waistband, I started in on the cutting them into strips part of my program.

I cut a variety.  Mostly strips that were either two or three inches wide and as long as the leg it had come from.  I made some even wider, for variety.  I ended up with lots of shades of blue, in lengths that ranged from Bill's extremely long legs down to tiny lenghts Julia had outgrown.

Then I folded them for braiding.  Not that I was even necessarily going to braid them.  I'd become sidetracked by weaving.  But whatever - I folded them the same - outer edges in to the center, and then fold those halves together like a book.  I ironed fold after fold after fold.  I gave some of the shorter lenghts to Julia so she could mess around with them, too.  I also stitched three of the longer short ones together so she could practice braiding - something everyone should learn to do, of course.  I'll teach Alex at some point, I'm sure. 

Anyway, once I'd got all my lenghts ironed, I kind of stopped. 

Yes.  That's right.  Production ground to a halt, as they say somewhere.

Rug-making is on hold until I have a bit more elbow room down in my little corner of the basement.  I have nowhere to work on a project.  I WILL - I confiscated the two sliding doors from the closet Bill and I shared before the closet was chopped in half to make a doorway to Alex's bedroom.  And I'll make me some tall sawhorses and use those doors as my work table.  But at the moment, there's no space for it.

BUT.

I did start with the weaving.  Just to see what it would look like.

And I am in love.

I took some of the short lengths and wove them together, and here's what I have:

 

I used the darker denims for one direction, and the lighter shades for the other.  Can't you imagine this on a larger scale?  And it's reversable!  And pretty rugged, too.

I like it.

So I can't wait to make something bigger. 

Which is why I will be oh, so happy when the bedroom project is done.

Anyway, that's where I am with the whole rug-making idea.  I'm in limbo.

But the whole weaving fascination is alive and well and busy in my head.

I remember a loooooooooong time ago - I think I learned this at my cousin's farm house in NH - oddly enough from my older male cousin.  I think.  I don't know.  Maybe I need more gingko biloba or whatever that is so I remember this stuff better.  But somewhere, some time ago, I learned to weave on a little makeshift loom.  I think I learned it while we were visiting the farm, and maybe when we got home, my father made me a small wooden loom frame thingy so I could weave my own stuff.  I remember weaving with yarn, and I think I made some sort of...flat, woven thing of yarn.  I don't remember much else.

BUT - hey, wouldn't it be cool to make myself a BIGGER frame and weave me some rugs? 

So that's another project percolating.

But for now, it's all still on hold until the other projects - projects that affect ALL of us and not just the projects that satisfy my artsy side - are the main priorities.

So I did this instead.

We needed bread, and I made enough dough for four loaves.  I baked three of them in standard loaf pans...

And here's what I did with the other quarter of dough:

 

I cut it into 16 pieces, rolled each one into a snake and wove them all toghether.  The edges are kind of messy looking - I didn't really know how to finish it, so I kind of looped the ends under each other.  I should have trimmed them all to the SAME length first, but live and learn.

Then Julia, who wanted to help, brushed the top with melted butter...

And into the oven it went.

We had it with dinner.

Alex, in particular, loved it.  I don't know if he loved the bread itself, just because it's homemade bread, or if he loved the pattern, or what.  Doesn't matter, as long as we're all content and well-fed.

Of course, next time, I'm thinking I could sprinkle salt and pepper and herbs on top...maybe some minced onion and garlic...freshly grated romano cheese...oh, the possibilities!

And The Winner Is....

There were 36 entrants in the contest for the Pillsbury Pizza Night Cookbook, which I thought was great.

This morning I plugged that information into the Random Integer Generator...

and...

the number selected was...

keep scrolling down...

keep going...

more...

keep going...

almost there...

just another inch or so...

almosssssssssstttttttttt....

yay, look down and you'll see the number:

True Random Number Service

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

5

Timestamp: 2009-05-04 11:28:29 UTC

~~~~

And the fifth entrant in my little giveaway was.......

jomama!

 

Congratulations jomama!!!

 

Please email me with your shipping address and I'll get the book out to you right away!

And to everyone else who participated - thanks!  It was lots of fun - as always!

New Cookbook Giveaway

TIME'S UP!  THANKS FOR PLAYING!

 

I figured since I'm not sure how much posting I'll be doing this week, or, rather, how much FOOD posting I'll be doing this week, that maybe this would be a good time for another cookbook giveaway.

And so here we go.

This is a Pillsbury publication, as you can tell by little Mister Pop-N-Fresh up there on the cover and the little blue "Pillsbury" emblem.

I received this a while back and intended to make something from the list of recipes, but I never did.

I'm terrible like that.

But at least you know there won't be any pizza sauce smudges on any of the pages!

Anyway, the subtitle, in case you can't read the tiny print, says

 "TOP IT, STUFF IT, TWIST IT -- The easy way to go with refrigerated dough."

And that's the main thrust of the book - how you can put together pizza quickly and easily in your busy life by using their refrigerated dough.

I haven't ever tried Pillsbury's refrigerated dough, so I can't say anything about it either way.  I pretty much always make my own, and I don't find doing so to be all that time-consuming.  Dough doesn't need (no pun intended) any attention once it's mixed together and worked a little.  It just hangs out, rising, while you gather together the toppings and make the sauce. 

But.  If making pizza dough is not your thing, but you want to make homemade pizzas on busy weeknights without tearing your hair out in doughy frustration, this might just be the route for you.

And regardless of the crust you use, the topping ideas sound pretty good - things like the traditional Margherita  and Four-Cheese pizzas to Smoky Chicken Pizza and Shrimp and Feta Greek-Style Pizza. 

And hence, the giveaway.

Here's what you do to enter:

In the comments section of THIS VERY POST, let me know whether you make your own pizza dough from scratch or if you buy pre-made dough, and why.  Or, if you've done both, which do you prefer?  And why?  Or is one just as good as the other?  My inquiring little mind wants to know.

And let's see...the contest will end this coming Sunday night - that would be May 3rd - at midnight, Eastern Standard Time, and I will post the winner on Monday, May 4th.

Okay?

Let the games begin!

Yay, Ray!

Just wanted to give a big cheer to my nephew, Ray, who ran the Boston Marathon today. 

His official time was 3:10:47, which was 2871 overall (out of 22849 who finished), 2688 in his gender (out of 13547 men who finished), and 1833 in his division, which was the 18-39 age group, 10004 who finished, 4981 of whom were male.

I think I got all that right, toggling back and forth between different stat pages....

But regardless of the number - he ran the whole marathon, every step of the 26.2 miles, and that, all by itself, is phenomenal, inspiring, and just plain awesome. 

As Alex wrote on a sign to cheer his cousin on - Go Go Go Ray!

Speaking of Eggs...

or, maybe, not eggs so much, but how about chickens.  Or, even better, chicks....

This is one of the cutest sites I've seen.  Ever.

Happy Easter!

Coloring Eggs, One More Time

 

I didn't do a lot of them this time.  I have to confess - I'm getting a little egged out.

I wanted to try out all sorts of other egg-coloring methods...but I ended up just doing a few.  But they were cool and fun and I'll definitely try out more of these next year.  But not now. 

But enough of that - here's what I DID do.  It's kind of an amalgamation of various methods I've seen on the web lately.

I'd read somewhere that soaking the eggs in the same water as your simmering black beans would leave the eggs with a purplish color, so that was the first order of business - to get some beans a-soaking and to hard boil some eggs.

 

Then I went outside to gather some little leaves.  It's still fairly cold outside, especially at night, and there aren't a ton of cute little leaves to pick.  I plucked some sage and some strawberry leaves and decided that was enough.

 

And I also peeled some skins off some onions.

 

And then I put two of the hard boiled eggs in with the boiling beans...

 

Then I took some turmeric and saffron from the spice cabinet and put them in a little bowl.

 

I poured a bit of very hot water over the turmeric and saffron so the turmeric would dissolve and the saffron would release some color.

Next, I got a pair of stockings.  Black ones, to lend a bit of drama.  (Drama?  It's egg-coloring.)

 

And then I started setting up these final 3 eggs.

First, I pressed my little strawberry leaves on one of them...

 

The leaves were soaking in water, which helped them stick to the eggs. 

Next I placed that egg on a square of stocking...

 

And carefully wrapped the stocking around the egg and secured it with a rubber band.

 

That one went into a coffee mug along with the turmeric-saffron water.

Next up, some onion skin.

 

Onion skin is nice to work with because it's curved and wraps easily around the egg.

 

And I think onion skin is pretty.

Anyway, onion skin and stocking - check.

 

This one went into a mug with plain hot water.

And finally, sage leaves AND onion skin.  I know - WOAH, there, Jayne!  Get off that crazy train!

 

I wrapped the stocking around that one and put it in another mug with just hot water - oh, and the remaining sage leaves.

So here they are - three blue mugs with my little egg experiments.

 

Meanwhile, the two other eggs continued to cook with the beans.  When I finally removed the eggs, here's what they looked like.  They've still got black been gunk on them.

 

I think they're kind of...well...pretty damn ugly.  But they still need a rinse.

This morning I unwrapped the eggs in the mugs.  Here we go...

First up, plain onion skin.

 

 

 

And then the strawberry leaves in the turmeric/saffron blend...

 

 

 

Hm...well, it's incredibly subdued, I guess.

Last, the sage and onion skin.

 

 

Now that one's kind of cool.

Okay, so here we are, the final four (I tossed one of the black bean eggs - it had cracked, and you know what?  Over-cooked, hard-boiled, black-bean-water-soaked eggs smell kind of horrible.

 

As you can see, I rinsed off the black bean egg - it's a quiet, purpley-gray color.  I like them.  I wish the turmeric/saffron egg had more color, but maybe I needed more spice in the water, or maybe I needed to let it soak longer.  I'll give it another try next year - or maybe this summer, to use for deviled eggs.

 

Anyway, that's it for the eggs for me this year. It's been fun! 

Cha Yip Dahn (Tea Eggs or Marbled Eggs) with Goo Yuet Fun Yim (Roasted Pepper and Salt Mix)

 

This particular recipe is from Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook.  I think I've referenced this book before.  It's HUGE and covers the cuisines of Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan, The Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.   The Tea Eggs, of course, are from China.

I chose this one over another recipe I found in a different book simply because it was the faster of the two.  I would like to try the other one as well, just to see how the eggs compare in terms of coloring and flavor.  These eggs taste faintly of the tea and the five spice powder - warm and earthy and sweet/spicy.  I figure the longer the eggs soak, the deeper the color and deeper the flavor.  I'll definitely make these again and soak them for a longer period of time.  I'll let you know how they turn out.

But for now...

Cha Yip Dahn

Serves:  12-18 as part of a selection of hors d'oeuvres

6 eggs

4 cups water

3 tablespoons tea leaves (I used 9 tea bags)

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon five spice powder (I - horrors - was nearly out of five spice powder, so I added a bit of each of the components and a lovely anise star to round it up to the required tablespoon.  Give or take a pinch of something.)

 

Put eggs in a saucepan, cover with cold water and bring slowly to the boil, stirring gently (this helps to centre the yolks).  Simmer gently for 7 minutes.  Cool eggs thoroughly under cold running water for 5 minutes. 

Lightly crack each egg shell by rolling on a hard surface.  Shell should be cracked all over, but do not remove.

Bring 4 cups water to the boil, add tea leaves, salt and five spice powcer. 

Add cracked eggs. 

Simmer, covered, for approximately 30 minutes or until shells turn brown.  Let eggs stand in covered pan for 30 minutes longer (overnight if possible). 

Drain,  

 

cool,

 

and shell. 

 The whites of eggs will have a marbled pattern on them.  Cut into quarters and serve with a dipping sauce.

 

So, what to dip them in?  The recipe for tea eggs is in the "Snacks and Appetizers" section of the China chapter.  And, quite helpfully, the facing page has a list of several dipping sauces and other condiments traditionally served with the snacks and appetizers in the chapter.  I looked through and saw many that looked tempting, but I ended up opting for the simplest - the Roasted Pepper and Salt Mix.

All you need are two tablespoons of black peppercorns and three tablespoons of salt.  

First you roast the peppercorns in a dry pan for about five minutes - "until pepper gives off a pleasant smell." 

And it did - it smelled...spicy and earthy and dark and intense and exotic.

Then, after you let the peppercorns cool a bit, you grind them up in a morter and pestle and then combine with the salt. 

Ta-da!   

 

And then all that's left is to arrange the egg slices on a plate and pour the pepper and salt mixture into a bowl.

   

 

   

Enjoy!

Wow! And Welcome! And More Egg Pictures!

I took a look at my stats this morning, as I do every now and then, and OH MY!

I thought I needed more coffee or new glasses - where'd that really big number come from????? 

It was the eggs. 

Eggs like these.

 

And these.

   

And also these.

   

So I just wanted to give a HUGE welcome to all the new visitors to my site who have arrived from places like Ohdeedoh and Lifehacker and The Presurfer and anywhere else that featured or linked to my post about coloring Easter Eggs. 

WELCOME! 

I'm delighted to see that - for the most part - people have gotten just as much of a kick out of these eggs as my kids and I and the rest of my family have!

And since I can't, at the moment, get enough of them, I'll spend the rest of this post subjecting you (if you stick around) to more pictures.

I made a batch with my kids (as you probably figured out from the small hand in the picture above), and they had a great time cracking all the eggs and later peeling them to reveal the crackley colors.

 

One of the fun things is that the color on the outside of the egg isn't always the color you're going to see under the shell.

    

Surprise! 

I admit I've become a bit obsessed.

 

I spent a good chunk of Friday just taking pictures of eggs.

   

 

They just lend themselves to all sorts of fun picture ideas...

  

     

 

   

 

   

 

   

After all that (and of course, there were a lot more pictures that didn't make the cut), the eggs were rather the worse for wear.  I tossed them the next morning. 

And made a newer, smaller batch so I could test another way of coloring them.

This time around I hard boiled them as usual, cracked the shells as usual, BUT instead of putting the cracked eggs in mugs or bowls of hot colored water, I just dissolved the gel colors in cold water, put the eggs in the mugs of colored water, and put everything in the fridge. 

They stayed there overnight,

and the next morning,

when I peeled them,

they were just as nice as the other batches I'd made. 

  

And even better, they were totally safe to eat. 

I sliced each egg in half and popped the yolks into a bowl.  I placed the whites (or reds or greens, etc) cut side down on a piece of paper towel to dry off a bit while I mixed mayo, mustard, salt, and pepper with the yolks.  Then I filled a piping bag with the yolk mixture and piped it back into the whites. 

 

 

Ta-da!  Totally wild deviled eggs!  Next time around I'll cook a few extra eggs or use a couple less whites so there's a greater proportion of yolk mixture to white, and the filling will mound up more and look more inviting.  To me, anyway.  And maybe top them with some chopped chives for a bit more color and texture.  Or not.  There seems to be plenty of color!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Giveaway - Soon

I just haven't picked out the cookbook to give away, and I want to make something from whichever book I select...so...giveaway to be announced once I get all that sorted out.

In the meantime, here's a photo of Scratchy looking up questionable sites on my laptop while I was bringing the kids to school...

"I wasn't doing anything!"

Coloring Eggs

 

I wouldn't go hiding these around the house for your kids to find on Easter morning. 

They're probably better suited to just eating, or perhaps making a batch of really wild deviled eggs - something I'm thinking of doing with the next batch. 

I've been thinking about making these for a while.

I'd seen recipes in a couple of my Asian cookbooks for Chinese Tea Eggs, a typical street snack found in parts of China.  Basically what you do is hardboil your eggs normally, and then, when they've cooled enough to handle, roll the eggs around on a hard surface to crack them.  You don't want to crack them too hard - you still want the shell to stay on the egg.  But you want to develop a nice overall cracked look.

 

Then, for the tea eggs, you'd make a pot of good, strong, dark tea and either simmer (recipes vary) the eggs for a while in the tea or just plunge them into the hot tea and leave them there for several hours.

To make mine, I hardboiled them, cooled them a bit, and rolled them around on a paper towel to crack them.  Some came out better than others.

Then I brought some more water to a boil and salted it (to flavor the eggs a bit, just in case we eat them).  While the water was heating up I set out several bowls for the various colors.  I picked out seven colors (no particular reason for that number - I'll probably make more when it's closer to Easter) and parcelled out some gel food coloring into each bowl.

 

 

 

I used pink, yellow, copper, green, blue, teal, and purple. 

When the water reached a boil and I'd added in some salt, I ladled water into each bowl and stirred the food coloring to dissolve it.  Then I placed one or two cracked eggs in each bowl, making sure they were covered completely with the colored water.

** And here's where I give you a word or two of advice.  First of all, have a towel under your bowls - if the egg displaces too much water, you'll have a mess, and food coloring CAN STAIN.  Second, use bowls or other containers that are more vertical then horizontal in dimension.  Actually coffee mugs worked really well for me - I ended up pouring colored water from my bowls into mugs - oh, the colorful mess I had!  But the mugs worked great.  I made sure to pick dark mugs so that if there was any staining catastrophe, no one but me would know.

I didn't take pictures of the eggs in their color baths - most were too dark. 

I left them in there for...(had to do some thinking just then) about 7 hours.  Yes.  I typed it correctly and you read it correctly.  7 hours. 

* Update *  I was thinking that it wasn't a very food-safe thing to do - leaving the eggs out to soak in hot/warm water for 7 hours.  In fact, it's not safe at all - it's a perfect environment for all sorts of bad little bugs to grow and thrive and contaminate everything.  We didn't eat those left out eggs anyway - I just took pictures and eventually tossed them.  Wasteful, right?  So I made a batch and instead of soaking them in hot colored water, I used cold colored water and soaked the eggs in the fridge overnight.  I'm happy to say it worked just as well AND you can eat the eggs!

Now, I don't know if it was necessary to leave them that long, but that's just the way it worked out, what with shuttling kids around and bringing Julia to gymnastics and making dinner and everything, it was nearly 7 pm when I finally got a chance to unveil my masterpieces. 

I was kind of excited, to tell you the truth.  And I was so excited that I didn't think to take a picture of the eggs BEFORE I peeled them, but ah well, that's why I don't write for Bon Appetit.

Here, however, is a lovely photo of the peeled shells:

 

Pretty darn festive themselves, aren't they? 

And here are my eggy jewels:

 

Aren't they cool?????  Well, some of them didn't come out so good, but the ones that did - I'm pretty happy with them.

As you can tell, it's hard to really see the detail on the yellow one.  I might not do yellow again, although it's so bright and pretty that maybe I will.  You just never know what I might do!

Anyway, the interesting thing (to me) is that some of them don't look like the colors I'd expected.  The two green ones are fine.  And that single teal egg is fine.  The orangy one is copper, but oddly enough, when I look at it today, it's more pink.  Or peach.  And those two purple ones?  Those were in the pink food coloring.  They looked purple yesterday (in the above photo) and today they've calmed down a bit to a fuschia.  The blue ones...they're fine.  And that darker blue, right in front?  That was supposed to be purple.

So either you can do a lot of scientific experimentation with amounts of food coloring and length of time spent soaking...or you can just wing it and let the eggs be like little colorful gifts as you peel them.

Both of my kids are dying to color eggs, especially Julia.  She saw all the mugs and bowls of eggs in food coloring on the counter yesterday, and unfortunatly she was sent to bed early (long story) and didn't get to see the final products.  I didn't show her this morning.  I was a bit concerned that she'd cry or get upset about missing the fun of peeling.

So I think I will make more of these and let the kids pick the colors and roll the eggs around to crack them. 

Alex WILL NOT eat eggs, but even he was impressed last night with how they looked.

And then perhaps I will make deviled eggs...or a really colorful egg salad...with the finished products.

OH!  Almost forgot - yet another bit of advice - when you're cracking the shells, be gentle with them.  If you whack them too hard on the counter or on your sibling's head (just preparing for everything here), you could also cause the white to split all the way to the yolk.  Just like this blue one on the end here (left front):

 

It's not the most horrible thing in the world, but it does kind of ruin the aesthetic.  And we don't want that, do we?  At least not for the pictures.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to for fun.  Hope you've been entertained!

(Oh, and if you haven't had enough of these eggs, go here.)

 

And We Have A Winner!

Okay, there were 36 entrants (I excluded any comment threads or second comments by the same person)...time to pull up the Random Integer Generator...(my kids are getting dressed for school and the cats are on strike)...

And the number selected is...........

~~~

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

6

Timestamp: 2009-04-02 11:38:58 UTC

~~~

I know it's a very tiny font - that's a 6, in case you don't have your reading glasses on.  So let me take a peek back at the comments.....

And the 6th entrant is:

Tiffany said...

I love hot crab dip!

ReplyMarch 27, 2009 at 12:09 PM

 

CONGRATULATIONS, TIFFANY!!! 

 

 

Okay, Tiffany - please send me your shipping address (jayne (at) barefootkitchenwitch (dot) com) and I'll send your book out! 

 

And to everyone else - thanks SO much for playing - I loved reading all the different dips you all enjoy - and I'll definitely have to give some of them a try!

 

Oh - and don't stray too far - I'll be announcing another cookbook giveaway the end of the week.  (I guess that would be tomorrow.)

 

Once again - Congratulations, Tiffany!

Hooray! Another Cookbook Giveaway!

TIME'S UP!  THE WINNER WILL BE POSTED SOON!

 

   Yet another gorgeous publication from Wiley, this slim hardcover by Peggy Fallon was published in December 2008.

I confess that it has spent the last couple of months languishing in the company of the other cookbooks I received during the 2008 holiday season.  I may have flipped through the pages when I received it, but that was all. 

In preparation for this giveaway, however, I took a closer look.  And a part of me doesn't actually want to give this one away now, but ah well, I've made the commitment and I must keep my word.

I wanted to pick out and make one of Fallon's dips BEFORE posting the contest, just so I could have the recipe and photos ready to go.  But I ran into a problem.  I couldn't pick just one to do.  First I picked this one, then I thought that one sounded good, too...and pretty soon I had a list of five or six I wanted to make.

I jotted down the ingredients I'd need (most of the ingredients were things I already had on hand, fortunately) and zipped out to the grocery store yesterday intending to crank out all of the recipes in one afternoon.

Ha!

Okay, that was a bit ambitious.  So instead, I made two of them yesterday, and I'll put together at least two more today and post them over the course of the weekend.  Just so you can see what you're in for if you enter and win this handy little book.

The recipe portion of the book is divided into four sections - "Cool Dips and Spreads," "Salsas and Such," "Warm Dips and Spreads," and "Dependable Dippers."  That last section includes suggestions for great alternatives to potato chips and corn chips to serve alongside your dips.   

Okay, enough blathering on.  Like I said, I'll be posting recipes from the book over the next several days, so you can see what you'd be in for if you had your very own copy of this charming volume.

The deadline for entries will be.....let's see, since I've got a bunch of recipes to post, let's make the deadline Wednesday, April 1st, at midnight, eastern standard time.  (And that's not a set up for an April Fool's Day joke - it's really and truly the deadline!)

To enter:

In the comments section of this post, tell me what sort of dip or salsa you find completely addictive.  It can be something you make yourself, it can be onion dip from a dry mix that your mom used to make when you were a kid.  Whatever it is - please share

I'll start - oh no...just one favorite?  Well, I make guacamole very often - at least once a week.  I don't have a recipe - it changes depending on what other ingredients I have.  No lime?  I use lemon.  No cilantro?  How about some basil?  My kids don't like the zing of onions or the heat of jalapenos, so if I'm making some for them I'll leave those out - in fact Alex's favorite guacamole consists of mashed avocado.  And that's it.  When it's just Bill and me, I'll go all out with tomato, cilantro, shallots or onions, tiny bits of any kind of hot pepper we have on hand, a good squeeze of lime, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.  Yum.

So let's hear it - what's your dip addiction?

Namaste

Recently Julia has been going around saying what sounded like "Mama stay," with the emphasis on the second "ma" in that word.  At some point I asked her what she was saying, and she said "Ma MA stay!  It's from doing yoga!"

AH!  Okay.  So I told her no, it's Namaste - with an "N."  So she said that a few times for practice and henceforth has been saying it pretty well correctly.

Just a few minutes ago I was on the computer in one room and Bill was in the other room.  I called to Julia to tell Daddy what she says when she does yoga.  She came in and whispered that she couldn't remember, so I whispered "namaste" to her and she grinned and ran out of the computer room and into the living room, shouting "Namaste" over and over.

Bill had no idea what she was saying, even when she said it slower and quieter, so I yelled in from the other room, where I was busy looking at my stats or looking up the hours for the local DMV (I know I was doing either one or the other at that moment)

"She's saying NAMASTE!"

And Bill said "What?"

"NA MA STE - I THINK IT MEANS PEACE - IT'S SOMETHING YOU SAY WHEN YOU'RE DOING YOGURT!"

And then I laughed and laughed uncontrollably for quite a while.  I am clearly no longer able to think or say or do two things at once with any degree of success.

Update:  Or maybe not an update per se...more like a correction.  I just looked up "namaste" and it actually translates roughly as "I bow to you" or "The light within me honors the light within you."  Either way, it is generally not accompanied by yogurt, either plain or with fruit.

And the Winner Is...

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

9

Timestamp: 2009-03-23 10:52:05 UTC

~~~

There were 12 entries in the "Yay, It's Spring!" cookbook giveaway.  I put that info in the lovely Random Integer Generator and the random number chosen was 9.

The ninth comment to that post was left by Jessi, so CONGRATULATIONS! to Jessi!!

Jessi, please shoot me an email with your shipping address and I'll get the cookbook out to you as soon as possible.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and look for another cookbook giveaway later this week!

Impromptu Live Blogging and Twittering Sweet and Tangy Scallops for Tonight's Dinner...

For dinner tonight I'm using one of the recipes in this cookbook.  I'll be updating it on Twitter, so you can follow along there if you'd like to.  And I'll update photos in this post as I go along, so keep checking back.

Or, if you'd like to cook along (if you haven't planned your evening meal yet), here's the recipe for you: 

Sweet and Tangy Scallops

from Weight Watchers in 20 Minutes

Serves 4

2 tsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 tsp ground ginger

Pinch crushed red pepper

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 cup reduced-sodium vegetable broth

1/4 cup dark raisins

1 T lime juice

1/2 tsp salt

1 pound sea scallops (about 24)

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

1.  Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the onion, garlic, ginger, and crushed red pepper.  Cook, stirring until the onion is softened, about 3 minutes.  Add the bell pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes.  Add the broth, raisins, lime juice, and salt; bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer about 5 minutes.

2.  Add the scallops to the skillet and simmer, covered, until just opaque in the center, about 5 minutes.  Stir in the cilantro.

Per serving (about 6 scallops and 1/2 cup broth with vegetables); 136 Cal, 3 g Fat, 0 g Sat Fat, 0 g Trans Fat, 32 mg Chol, 580 mg Sod, 13 g Carb, 1 g Fib, 14 g Prot, 98 mg Calc.  Points value: 3.

~~~

Okay, preparations to begin in oh, ten minutes or so.  Right now, it's quality after-work time with Bill...

  

Okay, fun's over.  Bill's playing War with Julia ("I don't want to play "Go Fish, Daddy, I want to play WAR!") and it's time for me to get going on dinner.

Here are the assembled ingredients, prior to my measuring and chopping:

And now, the gallery of prepped ingredients...

The olive oil,

 

Red pepper, onion, and garlic,

 

 

 

The ground ginger,

 

The crushed red pepper,

 

Vegetable broth (sorry, I don't think it's low sodium) -

 

Dark raisins,

  

Am I supposed to be hitting "save" after each photo is added?  I'm new to this Live-Blogging business...

Okay, hitting "save" now...

Next up, the lime juice,

 

Salt,

 

The chopped cilantro,

 

Oh, yeah, and the scallops.

  

Okay, I've also got some couscous made and keeping warm, so I think it's time to cook up these scallops.  It shouldn't take long at all. 

First task - Heat the oil in a large, non-stick skillet.  Well, I fail here, because I don't HAVE a large NONSTICK skillet.  Just the sticky kind.  But I think I can manage.

After the oil is hot, I add in the onion, garlic, ginger and crushed red pepper.  I'll be back.

 

Three minutes later...

 

The onion is softened.  Time to add the chopped red bell pepper.

 

When the pepper is "crisp-tender" it's time to add the broth, lime juice, raisins, and salt.

Here's the "crisp-tender" peppers -

 

And then I added the other ingredients...

 

Now I'm waiting for it all to come to a boil.

Meanwhile, Julia got whacked in the face "on accident" with a toy Alex was playing with, and while I tended her with ice and sympathy, Softie chose my momentary distraction to jump up onto the counter where the scallops were.  Fortunately I was able to leap across the kitchen, grab the cat and throw her to the ground before anything bad happened.

Phew!

(Isn't this EXCITING???)

Here's the mixture as it starts to boil...

 

And after it all has simmered for five minutes.

 

Yay!  Time to add the scallops -

 

And simmer, covered, til just opaque in the center, about 5 minutes.

Julia's setting the table while the scallops simmer.  Sometimes she's such a big help.

Julia is now singing a song that she's making up as she goes along, and Bill is singing backup.

By the way, the scallops are taking a bit longer than five minutes.  More like seven.  They're BIG scallops.

And here they are - nicely cooked but not over done.

  

Add in the cilantro, and you're ready to go.

 

Time to eat!

(This man thinks I'm nuts, by the way.)

 

But he'll revise that opinion once he eats dinner.

I'll be back later with opinions.

~~~

Okay, time for feedback.

Bill loved it.  Pure and simple.

The kids?  Well, while I was uploading pictures, and the kids and Bill were digging in, I could hear Julia saying "EEEW!"  She'd expressed a similar sentiment when we bought the scallops at Whole Foods earlier today ("I HATE scallops!") but when I asked her "Since when?" she couldn't come up with an answer.

Turned out, she liked the scallop dish and ate most of hers.

 

(She's saying "yes" in the above picture, not hissing at the camera.)

And my little boy?  Well, despite his love of seafood, he came to the conclusion that he still doesn't like scallops. 

He did try them, however, which is all we ask.  I made him a sandwich of leftover taco meat from last night and he was happy.

And me?

I enjoyed the dish.  It was quick to prep, quick to cook, and tasted just fine.  There was some sweetness from the raisins, which plumped nicely in the broth, but as for "Tangy" - well, I'd have made a few changes.  I might have upped the red pepper (OH - and I just realized I used ground instead of the crushed that was called for.  Sorry!) and maybe used some fresh ginger instead of the powder.  But that's just me.  My opinion aside, it's a nice, simple, healthy and satisfying dish.

I served it with some couscous and a salad.  Very good-for-you.  I feel rather virtuous.  I'll probably spoil that virtuous feeling later somehow, but for now, I feel all sorts of healthy.

And rather jazzed and tired at the same time.  Posting, chopping, prepping, cooking, photographing, uploading, and posting like that - it was pretty intense (for what it is).  Fun, but not something I'd do every night.  But every now and then?  Definitely!

Anyway, if you like the sound of this meal, and want to enter the giveaway, head over here to enter!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The "Yay, It's Spring!" Cookbook Giveaway

       

(If you'd like to skip my babbling and just enter the contest, scroll down a bit til you see the entry rules in bold type.)

I've had this one for a couple of months now.

I have other cookbooks to give away, too.  Books sent to me by the publisher.  Books to share or keep. 

They kind of stacked up during Christmas time and with all the cookies and everything else going on at that time, I just didn't have time to do anything with them.  So, like I said, they stacked up.

And so now I've got a bunch of cookbooks that don't fit on my shelves and I've got to get rid of at least SOME of them, because I don't know that we've got room for another bookcase in the dining room.  Unless we want to change the name of it to "the cookbook library" and eat on tv trays in the basement.  That might be fun once and a while, but not forever.

And so I figured I could do a bunch of giveaways over the next however many weeks, until my stack is less ominous. 

Therefore, to kick off this upcoming giveaway extravaganza, I thought I'd start things off today, this first day of Spring, to give it all a kind of festive, celebratory feel.

Or something like that.

Anyway.  First up is the book you see above, Weight Watchers in 20 Minutes.  The little pink circle sticker you see there reads "Includes POINTS values and new Weight Watchers momentum plan recipes."  The book also includes plenty of full-page photos of many of the recipes.  And I have to say, they look pretty tasty.

I'll just flip through the pages - by the way, the book is a hardcover "concealed-wiro" so it'll lie flat on your counter while you prepare your meals - and here are some of the recipes that catch my eye:

Lemon Pancakes with Fresh Raspberry Sauce

Spiced Oatmeal Brulee

Crab and Chive Frittata

Grilled Vegetable-Gruyere Sandwiches

Avocado, Tofu and Tomato Sandwiches

Kielbasa and Black Bean Soup

Corn and Crab Chowder

Flank Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

Lamb with Cucumber-Radish Salad

Veal Cutlets with Lemon-Caper Sauce

Sausages and Onion on Crispy Polenta

Parmesan and Potato-Crusted Flounder with Tomato-Cilantro Sauce

Warm Lentil Salad with Tahini Dressing

Orange-Poached Figs with Yogurt and Pistachios

Double Chocolate-Cranberry Pudding

...hungry yet?

The recipes sound delicious and look pretty simple.  In fact, I think maybe I'll pick one to make for dinner tonight.

I made tacos last night, so I'm not in the mood for anything meaty (or turkey-ey, as I used ground turkey) or Mexicany...

What I'd really like is seafood...the kids like seafood too, so I'll get feedback from everyone which I can share with all of you out there.

Okay - I'll make the Sweet and Tangy Scallops.   Haven't had scallops in ages and so this is a good excuse to get some.  I'll probably serve them with rice or couscous and a salad. 

I'll let you know how it turns out, and also how easy it is to make.

In the meantime, if you'd like to enter this contest, all you need to do is this:

In the comments section of this post, just answer one or some or all of the following:

        Do you (or will you) have a vegetable and/or herb garden this year?  If so, do you start your plants from seed indoors or do you buy it all as seedlings a bit later in the season and plant them?  Or is it a bit of both?  What's your favorite fruit or vegetable from your own garden every year?  And if there are more than one, what are they?  How do you like to cook them? 

And just to start things off, here are my answers....

Yes, we'll be growing herbs and vegetables and fruits this year.  We start (or, rather, Bill starts) the majority of the seeds indoors.  If something doesn't grow well, we'll buy seedlings later on at the farmers' market.  I can't pick one favorite - but one of the first vegetables we get is asparagus, which we like either tossed in olive oil and grilled or sauteed in a little butter with a squeeze of lemon.  The kids love the early peas, which they eat right off the plant and if I want any I have to fight the kids for them.  The peas rarely make it into the house in any quantity.  My own personal heaven is when the tomatoes start ripening and I make vats of roasted tomatoes and freeze them for sauce in the winter.

Deadline for entering will be Sunday night, 22 March 2009, at midnight, eastern standard time.  I'll pick and announce the winner on Monday, so please check back to see if you've won!  I'll need a mailing address from the winner, which can be sent to me at jayne (at) barefootkitchenwitch(dot)com.

Only one entry per person, please!

And....let the games begin!

Any Guesses?

Actually, I don't think this one will be too difficult.  But it's all I've got at the moment.

For Tracey

And the rest of the gang at the Sudden Yurt Commune.

It's snack time....

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey! I Won Something!

 Last week I got an email from Jenn (The Leftover Queen)& Co. at The Foodie Blogroll to let me know I was one of two random winners in their monthly Foodie Blogroll Magazine Giveaway Contest!

Like I need another magazine!  (Well, of course I do!)  My choices were Gourmet, Saveur, Bon Appetit, and Food and Wine.  I already receive Gourmet and Bon Appetit, and so after much coin flipping, I chose Food and Wine.  Because...you know...food AND wine.

Congratulations also to Foodista, the other winner in February 2009!

And thanks to The Foodie Blogroll folks!

Congratulations!

To Jenny of Picky Palate, winner of the Well Fed Network's Best Food Blog Family/Kids of 2008!!

For a complete listing of the winners in all the other categories, go here!

Late to the Ball - the 2008 Food Blog Awards

 

I only JUST found out about this within the last day or so, but I have been nominated for a "2008 Best Food Blog - Family/Kids" Award on the Well Fed Network and amazingly enough, my site is one of the five finalists.

Strange days, indeed!

Anyway, the polls are still open and will remain so until January 24th at 8:00 pm EST, so if you are so inclined, go ahead on over and VOTE! for one of us.

The other nominees in the Family/Kids category are Foodie Tots, Picky Palate, Under the High Chair, and Andrea's Recipes.  They're all fabulous blogs, and I'm honored (and, frankly, surprised) to be nominated along with them.

There are also 13 other categories, so take some time and peruse ALL of this year's nominees.

Winners will be announced on January 26th at the Well Fed Network's site.    

TWD - A Poem With the Cookies

It is right before Christmas

And all through my home

There are dozens of cookies.

And I made up this poem....

I’d been baking and baking

And baking and baking

(I know I’m repeating)

My feet - they were aching.

It was time to bake cookies

For Tuesdays with Dorie

(And right now we’re at

The main part of my story.)

I’d measured out flour

And sugar and - yes - butter

And tho’ I was weary

I continued to putter.

I spooned out some ginger

And lovely peach jam

Then thought - "Gonna take

A quick nap - that I am!"

I flopped on the couch

And drew up a blanket

And Scratchy, so playful,

Proceeded to yank it.

 

I drifted off quickly

For how long, I knew not,

When awakened I was

By the clang of a pot.

No - ‘twas more like a mixing bowl

Struck by a whisk.

But how? I’m in here -

Don’t be silly! Tsk, tsk!

Then I heard it again

There was something awry

So I got to my feet

Quite determined to spy.

 

I peered in the kitchen

And what did I see?

Not a cat, as I’d thought,

But a baking fairy!

She paid me no mind

If she’d heard me at all

From her perch on a chair

(For she wasn’t so tall.)

She combined my ingredients

In the bowl of the mixer

Then turned on the oven -

That cute little trickster.

 

She spooned out the dough

Onto parchment-lined pans.

So baking them, too,

Was a part of her plans!

Now into the oven

The sheet pans were slid

And you know, cookie baking

Was not all she did.

She washed all the dishes

And put them away,

And cleaned my house - spotless! -

In less than a day.

When the cookies were finished

So was the sprite

She’d done so much for me

In my pre-Christmas plight.

 

She turned once to view me

And gave a quick wink

And then she was gone -

In a flutter of pink.

And I heard her advise

Like she thought me a rookie -

"Happy Tuesdays with Dorie!

Now, go have a cookie!"

~~~

Thanks to Heather of Randomosity and the Girl for choosing this week's recipe.  You can find the recipe on her site or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking:  From My Home to Yours.  To see how all the other TWD poets-of-the-kitchen did this week, go here.

And the Winner of the Cookies is...

 

Okay, I'll try to make this relatively quick.  Or, if you don't want all the drama, you can skip to the end, but where's the fun in that?

There were 21 of you who entered this little contest of mine.  So, as I've done in the past, I had Alex write out the numbers one through twenty-one. 

 

Alex cut them up for me...

 

and Julia crumpled each paper number into a little ball and put it in a plastic container.

Please excuse the utter chaos in my dining room.  It's the cookie storm that continues to rage.

   

Anyway, as Julia finished up the last of the number crumpling, Alex went in search of our newest judge - Ms. Softie.

 

She wasn't ready to make her appearance just yet, so she scurried away, probably to check her makeup.

 

At last, Julia was finished.  She brought her container of crumpled numbers into the living room and waited while Alex went to find Softie again.

 

Alex escorted Judge Softie into the room, and ceremoniously dumped out the numbers before her.

 

We waited while Softie examined the crumpled bits of paper...

 

And then she turned her back and tried to make a hasty exit.

Alex caught her and brought her back to do her job.

 

But Softie just flat out refused to participate, no matter what we did to make it seem fun.

 

So Alex summoned our old friend, Judge Scratchy.

 

And, gentleman that he is, Scratchy stepped right in to assess the situation.

 

He asked for some space so he could think, so the kids backed up a bit...

 

Scratchy went off to consult for a moment with Judge Softie...

 

And then, at last, he made his decision.

 

(That was the only piece of paper he showed any interest in.  It was not a good morning to work with the cat judges.)

Decision-making is exhausting work, apparently.

I had Julia uncrumple the slip of paper and show me the number.

 

Huh?  I can't read that, Julia, what is it?

 

NINETEEN!  Number nineteen is the winner!

So who is that?

It's............Alison W!

Congratulations, Alison!  Please email me - jayne at barefootkitchenwitch dot com - with your shipping address and I'll ship your cookies out a bit later this week, when I've finally FINISHED the baking and will have a wide assortment to choose from.

To the rest of you - I'm sorry, but there could only be one winner (and the way the cats were behaving, we were lucky to get THAT) - better luck next time, and most of all - thanks so much for participating!  All the recipes sound great - I can't wait to try them!

Thanks again to all who entered!

 

From Me to You - A Contest, of Sorts

 

If you've been reading this blog a while, you know I've been baking (and whining about baking) all my eight zillion Christmas cookies.  I'm still not done.

But that's my problem, not yours, though it may SEEM like yours if you stop by too often.

Anyway.

I have been thinking that it would be fun to give away a selection of all these cookies to someone ELSE besides all the usual recipients.

I don't know what will be in the selection - and if you've got any nut allergies, sorry, but there is no way I can avoid nuts in this house (I married one and gave birth to two more, HAR HAR HAR), so I can't really offer anything that hasn't come in contact with nuts or nut-laced air or something.

But other than that...

I want to send off some cookies.  And so the contest will begin now and I'll close it at MIDNIGHT TONIGHT, DECEMBER 15th, EASTERN STANDARD TIME.

And the winner will be chosen (by Softie this time, as Scratchy and my kids have already had their turns at it) at random.

Now, to enter.

I may be asking a lot here, but what I'd really like are old family cookie recipes - if you're permitted to share them.  I know some families guard recipes like my husband guards his fishing spots.  But if you can share, and would like to, that's what I'd love to see here.

So, if you want to enter, please post a cookie recipe in the comments section OR, if you have a blog and you've posted the recipe there already, then put the link in the comments section. 

And if you're not from a cookie-making kind of family?  I'll take anything you've got.

Mostly, I just like to peer, figuratively, of course, through the windows of other families houses and see what their food traditions are.  So, since I'm busy making cookies and can't go around peering, I'm asking you to give me that glimpse. 

Does all that make sense?  I hope so.

Anyway, enough of my babbling.  I've got to get the kids ready for school.

The contest starts now, and the winner will be chosen tomorrow (once I can get Softie to cooperatie) and announced ASAP.  PLEASE check back here tomorrow and if you're the winner, email me your shipping address so I can get the cookies out to you quickly! 

Ready?  GO!

A Weekend of Cookies and Snowmen

 

It was a fun, busy, chaotic weekend.  This is the weekend BEFORE this current one.  I'm late in posting. 

On Friday I baked off the rest of the short dough I'd made, in a variety of kid-pleasing shapes:  snowmen, trees, reindeer, bells, angels, cats, birds, and squirrels.  Yes, squirrels. 

But because I never think there will be enough, I had to make more.  Plus it's nice to have a variety of flavors.  Originally I was going to make gingerbread cookies, but then, in my email, I got a link from Epicurious to "25 Days of Christmas Cookies."  So I clicked through the slide show, and came right back to the very first one in the group:

Chocolate Roll-Out Cookies.

I skimmed through the recipe, thought it sounded like what I wanted, and printed it out.  And that's when I noticed it.  The name in the top left-hand corner.  The recipe was published in Gourmet Magazine in December 2007.  And guess who wrote it?  Yep.  The Ubiquitous Dorie Greenspan.  I had to laugh.

And then I had to make the cookies.  I doubled the recipe, because, you know, that whole "might not be enough" thing.  And the dough - the dough smelled fabulous.  Good enough to eat right then and there, but I thought of the kids who were coming, and I refrained.

But really.  Cocoa powder AND melted bittersweet chocolate in the dough.  You can't go wrong there.  Oh, and a bit of cinnamon, too.  This recipe is a keeper.

With this dough, I cut out teddy bears, lions, more angels, bunnies, guitars, snowflakes, dogs, and cows.  Yes, cows.  In two sizes.  I love cows, and my cow cutters are actually stored with my December holiday cutters, not the animal cutters. 

 

All the kids present had a great time decorating (and eating) the cookies, both on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning before it was time for them all to go home.

Oddly enough, I didn't take any pictures of the kids' finished cookies, which was rather stupid of me, because those are way more entertaining than the stuff I did.  Ah well.  Here are a few pictures from Saturday's decorating party...

 

This is my nephew, Calvin.  Despite his advanced years (he's 16), he seems to really enjoy doing stuff like this with the kids.  Later on, he taught them to play Guitar Hero.  He's great with children.

 

 

And, of course, we all know Julia and Alex. 

 

And this, this is Natalie, my niece.  She is an AWESOME cookie-decorator.  I mean, they all do/did a great job, but Natalie just really has a knack for it.  She made a teddy bear with a little sweater on him that LOOKED like a real sweater. 

Saturday night, Bill made paella for dinner.  It was phenomenal.

 

The next morning we awoke to snowfall.  Alex and his friend Jack, who slept over, were the first ones awake, and the first ones to look outside.  They came in and told me, and I sent them downstairs to tell Calvin and Natalie.

After breakfast, everyone went outside to play in the snow.  There wasn't a lot of it, but there was enough for a mild snowball fight and the construction of three snowmen.

 

 

   

 

 

 

All in all, a pretty near-perfect weekend.

Oh, and just to keep things on a baking theme, here are a few pictures of the cookies I decorated.  Because, you know, it's all about me.

  

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

Oh, and in case you're wondering about that not-decorated little cow in the front...look closely.  He's got an eye.  A little tiny clump of cocoa powder, probably.  Anyway, I felt he didn't require any further embellishment. 

And then I ate him.

All in all, a great weekend.

You Didn't Think I Really Did All The Baking Myself, Did You?

 

The baking fairy comes in and does it while I'm asleep.

Baking and Twittering

Okay, I've just signed up with twitter - my updates will be over there on the right, near the top.  That's the plan for now, anyway.  I'll see how it goes.

And second - hold onto your hats, people - I'm planning to pull an all-night cooking-baking marathon.  Tonight. 

And as I go, I will comment and update things on twitter.  (Which is why I went to the trouble of setting it up in the first place.)

And as I look ahead, I can't help but think of the Dick Van Dyke show when he did that radio marathon and then had to go to his job interview with Alan Brady on no sleep.  My hero.

So anyway, that's the scoop.  Stay tuned!

On Thanksgiving Eve...

 

Scratchy is fascinated by the other little creatures that inhabit this household.  Cricket-Catcher, the Evil Lizard With the Bone-Crushing Jaws, lives in the tank to the left.  His winter meals - store-boughten crickets - scurry around in the little container in the middle, where they are dine on little orange cubes of nutritionally complete Cricket Food and remain properly hydrated by slurping on this bright blue stuff that looks like raspberry gelatin caviar.  And finally, there is the newest member of the clan - Bluey, the Betta.  He swims and fashions bubble houses in the little fish-shaped tank, and the little fish-shaped tank is inside the larger tank so the cats can't mess with him. 

We didn't think that Scratchy might use the mesh cover as a futon.

Most of the time he creeps up the stairs, picks his way onto the lower table where Cricket-Catcher is, and then either watches the lizard, or moves over a bit and watches the crickets.  Most exciting of all, for Scratchy, is if there is a cricket wandering around inside the lizard tank.  Kind of like watching his own episodes of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom."

We think he's stressing the lizard.  Cricket-Catcher isn't used to being the smaller creature.  Before the kittens took notice of him, he lived in a world where he was king.  He terrified his tank-mate until the poor thing died.  And he snacks on worms and crickets bigger than some of the fish in our other tank.

Now, however, the tide has turned, and life ain't so pretty now.

Unless your name is Scratchy.

 

And in that case, life's pretty good.

May yours be just as good!  Happy Thanksgiving!

The Winner, According to Judge Scratchy

Okay folks.

Before I get to the winner, you KNOW that I have to tell a story.  With pictures.  So settle down and drink your coffee or other beverage, have a couple of cookies, and read.

First, I counted up the entrants in this contest.  There were 27 of you.

I had Alex write out all the numbers from 1-27 on some paper.

 

And - hang on - before any of you (JEN) point out that the number 8 is missing, don't worry, my son must have noticed it while he was cutting the numbers out, because - after the whole picking-of-the-winner was over, and I was uploading pictures, I noticed that the 8 was absent, so I went through all the little slips of paper - WHICH I KEPT JUST IN CASE SOMETHING LIKE THIS WERE TO HAPPEN - and made sure that every number was represented during the all-important SELECTION OF THE WINNER BY SCRATCHY.

And I took a picture:

 

And lo and behold, there's the 8, right between the 7 and the 9.

 

Thank goodness!

Okay, back to the beginning.

Alex cut up the numbers and Julia's job was to fold the slips of paper and put them in a plastic container.

 

That's her official Paper-Folding Tiara atop her head.  And in the background?  The mess that was my dining room this morning.  I say "was" because even as I type this, the kids are sorting through their junk stuff to decide what to keep, and the rest will be tossed, and order will be restored for a portion of today.

 

 

Yes, Julia, ALL of them.

But it was too much for her.  So Alex came in to help.

 

 

 

Eventually Julia kicked Alex out of the room, perhaps figuring that if she let him do too much, her title would be revoked and she'd lose her tiara.

Once all the slips of paper were folded and in the container, it was time to summon the judge.

Alex found him and brought him into the dining room where I permitted a break in the rules and allowed Alex to place Scratchy RIGHT ON THE TABLE. 

I don't have a picture of that exciting moment because Scratchy has learned, really really learned, that he doesn't belong there.  So, before anyone could say a word, he hopped down onto a chair, which is permitted territory.

 

Alex gave him loving scratches around the neck,

 

Why look.  There's a pink, unwrapped lollipop on the floor.  I really need to check for these things before I take pictures.  Sigh.

Anyway, since working on the table was not an option, we moved Scratchy and the slips of paper to the floor.

 

He sniffed them.

 

And was completely NOT interested.  He appeared to be heading toward his food and water dishes...

 

And then he changed his mind and flopped down, mentally exhausted, amid the folded bits of paper.  Alex stood on one foot, anxiously awaiting the next bit of excitement.

But nothing happened.  So I had Alex sit down with him and sort of shuffle the bits of paper around to make them seem more interesting to Scratchy.

 

It worked!  I had Alex back off a bit, to allow Scratchy time to make his selection.

 

Yep.  Come on, guy, just pick one...there's a good boy....

 

And then - with most of the family watching (Bill had joined us; Julia was totally over it.) - Scratchy picked the winning slip of paper:

 

I waited a moment, to see if this was his final decision, and when I was certain that he wasn't going to change his mind, I unfolded the paper to see what the number was.

(drum roll here would be nice)

And the winning number is...

 

Number 2! 

And who was our second entrant?

Margie! 

CONGRATULATIONS, MARGIE!

Now, so that I can get your book shipped out to you as soon as possible, please email your shipping address to me at jayne (at) barefootkitchenwitch (dot) com.

Thanks again to all of you who participated, and Beth, you know, maybe you'd increase your chances of winning if you actually invited ME to one of your fancy schmancy parties.  Just saying.  :)  AND JUST KIDDING, EVERYONE!  I WILL ACCEPT NO BRIBERY OR FLATTERY IN THESE CONTESTS!  Scratchy, however, could probably be swayed by a lovely piece of wild salmon.  Cats don't have the superior morals and ethics and scruples that I do.

Okay, that's it for now.  I've got bread in the oven, I need to bake a pie, one of Julia's little friends is coming over in 52 minutes, the house is a mess, and so I've really got to stop typing now.  Really.  I do.  Now.  Okay, NOW.

Time's Up...

Thank you to everyone who entered - I loved reading all your comments!

I'll be back later to post the winner, once I get the cats organized and they have a clear understanding of how to make their selection.

In the meantime...here's a picture of Julia I never got around to posting last month. 

Yes, that's blue paint on her nose. 

She put it there.

Why?  I don't know. 

I don't know.

Anyway - back later with the winner.  Stay tuned! 

 

Don't Forget!

The deadline is midnight tonight!

'Tis the Season - Another Book Giveaway!

Good Morning and Happy Middle of the Week!

I'm going to make this (relatively) short and sweet:

I have lovely book here by Matthew Mead, called Entertaining Simple.  To quote the subtitle, it's full of "recipes, menus, and party ideas for every kind of gathering."  Put out by Wiley Press, the book is a gorgeous collection of suggestions and photographs (beautifully done by Quentin Bacon) to inspire you. 

 

So, how do you enter?

 

Like this:

 

In the comments section of this post, I'd like to know if you like to entertain or not, and if you do, what's your favorite sort of gathering to host?  A big holiday meal?  Simple party with friends, your child's birthday?  What.  And if you want to share details, like WHY you enjoy it, or what you serve, or anything else, feel free. 

 

And then, when the contest is over, I'll come up with some clever and cute way to select one of the entries, at random, as the winner.  I'm thinking maybe my cats could help out this time...maybe.

 

The contest will remain open until midnight of this coming Friday, November 21st, and the winner will be announced on Saturday, November 22nd.  PLEASE remember to come back here and see if you're the winner.  If you are, email me at jayne (at) barefootkitchenwitch (dot) com with your shipping address so I can get the book out to you as soon as possible.

 

I believe that's everything. 

Let the contest begin! 

Go, Yellow!

We brought the kids to see their first hockey game last night.  Providence Bruins vs. Worcestor Sharks.  We won - 8-3.  We didn't stay for the whole thing - it was way past their bed times, and Julia, especially, was getting tired and cranky by the end of the second period. 

Every year a huge bunch of Bill's middle school chorus students sing at one of the Bruins games.  They've been doing this for a number of years now - I've lost count.  Anyway, the kids assemble down in the basement or whatever it's called at the Dunkin Donuts Center (once upon a time it was merely the Civic Center, but that's changed) to run through their songs and line up, and then they are led onto a mat that's been rolled out onto the ice.  They sing "God Bless America" and the National Anthem, and then they go join their family and friends to watch the game. 

 

This year we brought Alex and Julia.  We figured Julia was old enough to sit through all or most of a game and not require physical restraints.  So first, we hung out with Bill and his students (about 120 of them) and the current student teacher working with Bill (whose name, coincidentally, is also Bill) as they all gathered.

The student dress code is rather formal - polished and professional looking.  Boys wore white shirts, black pants, and ties.  Girls wore white shirts and black skirts.  This pre-game part is my favorite.  All these middle school kids, looking sharp as a group in their black and white.  They're so cute.  The girls, most of them, stand around comparing skirts, shoes, hair and nail polish.  The boys...they're the ones, for the most part, who look like they're playing dress-up.  Awkward and a bit uncomfortable in their grown-up white oxfords...the ties - some clip-ons, some in need of re-tying. 

All of them in various phases of transition from child to adolescent.  By turns somber and giggly.  But when it came time to sing, they were all attentive and focused.

Anyway.  I took pictures (really?) and I've uploaded some (a very small percentage, actually) to flickr, so you can see them here.

But I had to share my absolute favorite one here.

After the singing, Bill joined Alex, Julia and I to watch the game.  He'd asked his Bruins contact, John, for a couple of hats for the kids, and we ended up getting four - "two for the kids and two for Mom and Dad, all matching," John said as he handed them to me (Bill was off somewhere getting food).  So we sat there, the four of us, slightly dorky but happy in our matching hats, watching the game.

Alex REALLY got into it.  He was yelling and cheering...once he got the gist of what was going on.  I explained it to him bit by bit.  We're the Bruins, the other team is the Sharks.  We're in the yellow and white; they're in the black.  "What are we called, again?"  The Bruins.  When the Bruins scored their first goal, everyone around us was cheering and roaring and whistling - and I was startled to see that Alex was whistling, too.  When did he learn to do that?  And he was LOUD!  Fingers shoved in his mouth, shrill, piercing sounds damaging my eardrums...

And then I watched him a bit.  He had three fingers stuffed in his open mouth.  And a loud, shrieking whistle-LIKE noise poured forth in frequent, quick blasts.

He wasn't whistling.  He was...well, I don't even know what you'd call it, really.  I guess it was akin to screaming, but the sound he'd created genuinely sounded like a whistle and not a scream.  Whatever it was, it fit right in with the rest of the surrounding noise.

This picture was taken maybe after our third goal...we had the hats by then, and Bill had bought a big tub of popcorn for the kids.  We scored - and Alex, our newly minted crazed hockey fan, mouth full of popcorn, was ecstatic.

   

I dare anyone to look at that and not smile.

Images From Halloween 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Jen - the Alien Spouse - Please Call Off Your Lawyers

On the advice of my attorneys, and in the interest of full disclosure and keeping the peace and not getting my butlers sued off me (though a bit of reduction wouldn't be a bad thing), here, for all to see, but especially Jen because of the cloud of suspicion she has raised over the ethics and fair play involved in the most recent Cookbook Giveaway (see her comment), I hereby display photographic evidence that there was, indeed, a number 3 included in the drawing.

 

I actually saved the slips of paper JUST IN CASE SUCH A DISPUTE MIGHT ARISE!!!

 

I hope this prevents any further insinuation relative to the integrity of my giveaway program.

Reminder! Gluten-Free Cookbook Giveaway Contest!

Don't forget to go here to enter, if you are interested in maybe winning this enormous cookbook (1000 recipes!) filled with Gluten-free recipes.

Contest ends tomorrow (Sunday, October 26th, 2008 at 12:00 noon, eastern standard time.)!!

Time For Another Cookbook Giveaway!

This is another book I was sent from the publisher recently.  It's called 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes, and it's by Carol Fenster.  The book has had great reviews, from what I've seen.

Now, I am fortunate in that I have no problem with gluten in anything I eat, and neither do my husband or my kids.  I have no desire to eliminate gluten from my diet, either.  In fact, I heartily embrace gluten in my bread-baking endeavors.

But I know there is definitely a huge market for cookbooks like this, so I offer it to all of you out there who would really benefit from its recipes.

So, let's see about the guidelines....

If you would like a shot at winning this book, you'll need to leave a comment to this post.

Your comment should be about...........Halloween costumes.  If you or your kid(s) or nieces and/or nephews are going trick or treating, what will you/they be dressed as?  Or, what is the best costume or worst costume you've ever worn.  Or the creepiest.  Or the best or worst or creepiest costume you've seen someone else wear.  Something about Halloween costumes.  I know - it has absolutely nothing to do with cooking gluten-free at all.  I'm just interested in costume stories.

Please - only one comment/entry per person. 

The contest ends...ummmmmmmm...............what's today, Thursday?  The contest will end Sunday, October 26th, at 12:00 NOON, eastern standard time.  Any comments posted after that will not be included, no matter how entertaining they might be.  Sorry. 

The winner will be announced Monday and will be chosen thusly:  I will count up the number of entrants and have my children number slips of paper to correspond with that total.  (Educational!)  Then I will have my kids fold the slips of numbered paper in half and put them all in a plastic trick-or-treat pumpkin and shake them around a bit.  And finally, one child (probably Julia) will reach into the pumpkin and select one slip of paper and hand it to her brother (Alex) and he will display the winning number so I can take a picture and post it and from that number determine who the winner of the cookbook is.

Won't that be fun????  Well, for me, anyway.

Maybe I can work the cats into it somehow, too.  I'll think about it.

I'll announce the winner and then that person will need to email me with his/her shipping address so I can send out the book.

Sound good?

If you have questions about the contest, email me - jayne at barefootkitchenwitch dot com. 

Okay?  Ready?  Set?

Let the contest begin!!

 

And the Winner is....

Well, we'll get to that.

Before I do - just wanted to say thanks so much to everyone (except Ralph) who participated.  It was a lot of fun for me just to see all the likes and dislikes and new ideas I need to try.  If you didn't take the time to go through and read all the comments, you really should go back and do it.  I'm thinking I'll have to make some pizza tonight and try something new on top...maybe the sauerkraut - there were a couple of you who suggested that one.  Or the asparagus-spinach pesto with grilled shrimp and mozzarella that Kelli H. mentioned.  Yum. 

For the record, Alex likes pepperoni and does not like mushrooms.

Julia likes mushrooms and does not like pepperoni, even though sometimes she says she does, but then she ends up not eating it.

I have had pineapple on my pizza but I have to say it didn't thrill me.  I do, however, LOVE anchovies. 

But who really cares about that - you're here to find out who gets the book, right?  You've probably already skipped this stuff and gone right to the end where I announce the winner, and now you're just reading this part to be polite or something.  Thank you for that.

Okay.  Here's what I did.  I went through the list of comments and first of all, eliminated the one comment that came in after the midnight deadline - (sorry Crystl - by the way, pears and gorgonzola sounds pretty interesting - I may try that one soon.) AND I eliminated from the count the one second comment someone made and also the scolding comment my sister made, which was directed at Ralph.  I should have also eliminated Ralph's comment because he didn't even answer the question, he just tried to kiss up to me and that NEVER works.  (FYI, Ralph and I have been friends for a LOOOOOOOOOONG time and though he's MUCH MUCH older than I am, he behaves like the pesky little brother that I never had (thanks Mom and Dad!!), and that entitles me to roll my eyes and sound annoyed with him.  Some day I will write a post about him.  Some day.) 

Anyway.  Once I'd eliminated those few comments (not from the post, just from the tally), there were a total of 34 comments eligible.  I plugged the numbers into Random.org's cool Random Integer Generator, and it gave me the following:

True Random Number Service

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

33

Timestamp: 2008-10-03 11:12:32 UTC

That's it - number 33 is the winner, and number 33 was Angie Lou.

Congratulations, Angie Lou! 

Please email me (jayne at barefootkitchenwitch dot com) with your shipping information and I'll send you your copy of the California Pizza Kitchen Family Cookbook!

Thanks again to all who participated!  I'll be giving away another cookbook within the next week or two, so keep checking back!

Time for Another Cookbook Giveaway! Yippeeeee!

I keep getting cookbooks.  Publishers send them, and they're starting to pile up faster than I can test drive and rate them. 

So guess what - you benefit!  I just can't see myself keeping everything that comes through my kitchen door - I already have more cookbooks than a small Barnes & Noble - and I thought, rather than being tacky and selling them in my recent yard sale, I could start giving some of them away.

So here we are.

Not long ago I received a copy of The California Pizza Kitchen Family Cookbook by Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield, co-founders and co-CEOs of California Pizza Kitchen, with gorgeous photographs by Lucy Schaeffer.

Here's what it looks like:

 

It's published by Wiley, which means the book itself is lovely - great photos, heavy duty, acid-free paper, and, of course, great recipes throughout.

To be honest, I'd never heard of the California Pizza Kitchen - possibly because I live way on the other side of the country, here in RI, and we don't have one of them in my back yard.  (They do have them in CT, and MA, however, so perhaps one day I shall load my family up and drive us there for a meal.  If I do, I'll let you know how it goes.)

But after looking through the book, I kind of wish we DID have a CPK in my neighborhood, because their style of creating pizzas is right up my alley. 

Here are a few to get you drooling:

Jamaican Jerk Chicken Pizza

White Pizza with Bacon

Chipotle Chicken Pizza

Vegetarian Pizza with Japanese Eggplant and Goat Cheese

Sound tempting?  And there are also recipes for pizza dough and all sorts of sauces, kid-themed pizzas, and dessert pizzas.  AND, there are several chapters of recipes for OTHER sorts of food.  Appetizers, salads, sandwiches...all sorts of goodies to round out the meal. 

For instance -

Avocado Club Egg Rolls

Miso Salad with Crab and Shrimp

Grilled Chicken Pesto Panini

The book is very fresh/California/fusiony/Wolfgang Puck-ish in feel, and actually I saw something on the Food Network some time ago about Ed LaDou, the original pizza chef at Spago, who was hired to design CPK's menu.  So there you go.

So why am I giving this lovely book away?

Well, because a lot of the recipe ideas are SO similar to things we come up with here at home that I don't think I'd use it all that often.  I might take it out and look at it now and then, maybe for inspiration, or to gaze hungrily at the pages...but I don't really, honestly, NEED it.  In fact, I'm telling myself it would be greedy and gluttonous of me to keep it.  Is that good enough for you?

So here's the deal.

Post a comment here between now and oh....Thursday, October 3rd 2008, at midnight, eastern standard time.

The comment?  Ummmmm...okay, let's talk pizzas. 

I know we've done that before with some other cookbook giveaway, but this time I want to hear about either the one topping you absolutely CAN NOT ABIDE on your pizza, OR, what is a topping you LOVE but most of the rest of the civilized world would find totally icky.

Yes, it's gross-out pizza commenting here at Barefoot Kitchen Witch.  That's just the kind of mood I'm in this morning. 

And if you don't have anything to say for either suggested topic, then fine, just tell me SOMETHING pizza-ish.  I'm just looking to be entertained, I guess.

The winner will be chosen AT RANDOM and will be announced on Friday morning.

Okay?  Ready?  On your mark, get set, COMMENT! 

Need a Laugh?

Go here, read the post, and BE SURE TO WATCH THE CLIP!!!

(I've watched it several times now.  Just the look on his face...hahahahahaha!)

Care to Guess?

It's probably not going to be that hard.  But I thought it looked kind of cool....

So, what is it?

My Life - the Musical

O-ho the Wellth Fargo Wagon ith a-comin' now,

I don't know how I can ever wait to thee.

 
It could be thumpin' for thumone who ith - No relation

but it could be...

thump'n thpethyul ...

Jutht for me!

(My older, smaller one broke, and my blender just wasn't getting the job done...and so...I upgraded.)

"I love you." "I know."

I was at my parents' house for coffee this morning, and downstairs in a box, between old high school notebooks from Latin and Biology, I found this image, carefully sliced from a magazine.

You can't really see it, but there is still scotch tape on the corners with very faint traces of wallpaper on the side that used to be sticky.

I brought it back here with me, just for kicks. 

It's hanging in the kitchen now.  :)

Miss me?

We (me, husband, kids) went camping for the last few days up in NH.  I'll write about that tomorrow, probably - we just got back today and I'm just catching up on emails.

So, since you've been kind enough to stop by, let me point you in the direction of my new favorite site (thanks, Jen!) - Cake Wrecks.  Look through it all.  The spelling and punctuation snafus are my favorites.

Any Guesses?

And no, I didn't use a macro lens for this shot.

If you'd like to see more from this batch, you can see them here.

If you're more interested in the recipe, Chocolate Zucchini Bread, then go on over here.

Off We Go, Into the Wild Blueberry Yonder...

I started this post last Friday and then got sidetracked and tripped up and busy and all, so I'm finally getting to it NOW. 

Here's my original beginning - again, this was last Friday...

Sorry, I am having title-writing dysfunction this morning.  It took me forever to decide what to write about this morning, and then I scrapped that and started over anyway, and then I stared at the blank spot for the title, and stared...and stared...and closed my eyes for while...and stared some more.  So that's the culmination of all my efforts.  My brain is just foggy this morning - probably because it's going to be all those awful summertime "H" words today - hazy, hot and humid - and I'm already sluggish, in anticipation.

Yesterday we went blueberry picking. 

Out in the wild. 

Okay, not the wild, but in a woodsy area near a nice big pond. 

 

We picked berries,

Alex hunted frogs,

For a time, Julia refused to switch her shoes so they'd be on the correct feet. 

We saw a broken Robin's egg,

 

and tiny grasshoppers on little wildflowers,

and a fuzzy yellow caterpillar.

When the kids started getting restless, Bill took them out in the canoe while I finished picking the berries.

I just noticed something with this picture...I'll go in closer so you can see, too.

Look at the faces of my husband and my son.  Bill and Mini-Bill, intensity-wise.  Julia sort of looks like she's sneering.  Like..."Okay, this is no fun, they're not letting me cast, I don't want to be in this boat any more."

Between the four of us (mostly me) we picked about 3+ cups of berries - they were the little tiny wild ones - and I could have done better but I really, really wanted to get a shot of a fish leaping out of the water to catch one of the zillions of dragonflies that swooped and soared above the surface,

so there were times when I just stood perfectly still,

camera ready,

finger poised above the shutter button,

waiting. 

And waiting. 

And trying not to be annoyed by the bugs that occasionally buzzed in my ears or above my head, or landed on my legs.  I tried to be patient, I really did.  I tried to get into a National Geographic Wildlife Photographer state of mind, and just settle in for the long haul.

And so now I'll pick up where I left off last Friday....

I never did get that perfect shot of a fish leaping out of the water.  I just missed it so many times,

and after a while I'd curse the fish out there and turn back to the blueberries.  And then I'd hear another splash.  The best I got was this shot of the fish as it fell back into the water.

Oh well. 

Alex learned to paddle a canoe...

I took a lot of pictures, and picked blueberries, and all in all it was a nice morning.

And what did I do with the blueberries?

Wild Blueberry Sorbet!

Yay!

The Kindness of Strangers

This blows my mind, but I have received three - that's right, three - blogging awards from fellow bloggers, and I am rather paralyzed by the whole thing.

First there was this one, the E for Excellent award, sent to me by Tommi of Brown Interior.

 

I'm definitely flattered - but more than that, I'm delighted to see that she, too, has caught the cheese-making bug - check out this Ricotta Bread she baked recently!  I'm wanting to make up a batch of ricotta JUST to make this bread.

Thank you, Tommi!

Next came the Arte y pico award from Susan of She's Becoming DoughMessTic.  She's got a great blog (and an unbearably adorable son) - and she's also the one who nudged me into finding a recipe for a softer bread than the one I'd recently posted.  I love this kind of interaction - this community of strangers becoming friends...all of us nudging each other to do better.  (Huh?  I ramble.)

Thank you, Susan!

And most recently, from Deb of Kahakai Kitchen - the Yum Yum Blog Award.  "Yum Yum" is very definitely an accurate description for Deb's lovely blog - and the fact that she's in Hawaii reminds me that my husband and I need to go back for an anniversary or second honeymoon or something. 

 

Aloha and Mahalo, Deb in Hawaii!

I am really, really overwhelmed.  Really.  This sort of thing brings out all the shyness in me, because the NEXT job is to pass these awards along to the bloggers I think deserve them.  And I always feel...like an autograph hound chasing down the best and brightest stars out there, and then standing there, pen and paper in hand, gushing and babbling like a rain-swollen brook.  "Um...Hi!  Hi, you're (insert Big Name here)!  You're GREAT!  I mean, your work is really GREAT!  Hi!  (long, awkward silence in which I hold out the pen and paper but not quite far enough, because I'm being pulled apart by my own dorkiness and star-stricken-ness.) 

Anyway, there, I'm done with the cathartic, here's-how-awkward-I-am part.  I really am a dork.

Now for the passing it along part.

Technically, I'm supposed to choose something like five recipients for EACH of these awards, and if I'd done that immediately upon receipt, things would have been easier.  But since I've let them get backed up, I'm going to break the rule (as rainbowbrown said - "rules schmules") and pick a couple of blogs for each award.

So here goes...

For the E is for Excellent award...

The Sheila Variations.  Sheila is the reason I started my own blog.  She had started one, and I thought - hey, I want to do that, too!  She and I have been friends for a long time - so long you'd fall right over if you tried to lean back that far.  Sheila is a whirlwind of a writer, on topics like books, writers, movies, theatre, actors, American history, World history, any country that's name ends in -stan or -vokia or pretty much any other group of letters you can lump together, music, her beloved Red Sox, and oh, just about anything else.  Go read her - she is one of the very best.

Gone With the Toe.  Yeah, you can say "nepotism" all you want, but I really don't care.  Yes, I'm giving an E is for Excellent award to my sister.  And no, she hasn't posted in a while, so you might ask why she should get recognition.  Well, because SHE is excellent.  Can I tell you about her for a minute?  She's my sister, a wife, a mother of two teenagers, and works outside the home.  She's an awesome gardener, and she taught herself to crochet.  She is unimpressed by BS, and tries not to waste her time listening to it.  She pickles peppers, and makes some yummy loaves of bread, not to mention a smooth cup of coffee.  She has been known to wrestle combative lizards apart and grab doomed birds out of the jaws of one of her cats.  She is not to be messed with.  She earned her black belt in Karate a while back, and when I say "earned" - I mean in an "ABC's Wide World of Sports" intro kind of way.  She had been on track to get her black belt originally when a horrible accident with a toppling old-fashioned cast-iron (or something heavy) radiator fell on her FEET and thus kept her OFF of them for months.  She lost half a toe and her, black belt acquisition was set back as well.  But as soon as she could safely do so, she was back at it, sparring and running along with everyone else.  And on the final physical testing day - a long, exhausting day of kata and sparring and torture - some wild teenage kid with a lack of self-control BROKE MY SISTER'S ARM.  So, like I said, she damn well earned that black belt.  She never, ever quit.  And she never wasted time feeling sorry for herself.  And that's how she is.  She doesn't sit down and stop.  She may get sidelined by other things for a bit, but she keeps coming back, moving forward, with little fanfare, no self pity, and a dark and wry sense of humor.  The tattoo on her ankle is a symbol that means "Warrior," and that's a pretty apt description.  Anyway, the whole toe story is where her blog name came from, and I hope she gets back to it soon.  (But first she'll smack me for giving her this award.)

And for the Pico y Arte award...

Dooce.  Here is a perfect example of me feeling absolutely dorky, standing (figuratively) here holding out my pen and paper for an autograph, stammering and stuttering about why I think Heather Armstrong totally rocks.  Not that the world needs me to tell them - she is one of the best writers out there.  Her blog is gorgeous, her daily photos are fabulous, and her house is tidier than mine will ever be.  She has a fabulous husband and a daughter who is about 3 months older than mine, and I love reading her posts about the lovely Leta, because Heather writes them with a mix of love and exasperation, joy and headaches that I can relate to.  Best of all, Heather has written openly and honestly about her battles with depression and anxiety, and as someone who has fought on that battlefield a bit herself, I appreciate knowing that I'm not as alone as I've thought with these demons.  If she wasn't so annoyingly slender, I wouldn't mind having her as a neighbor, and I wouldn't even mind if her dogs came in my yard sometimes. 

And for the Yum Yum Award...

I could just start with the entire blogroll from the Tuesdays with Dorie group - every one of these bakers is devoted to broadening her (or his) culinary horizons and bettering techniques.  They are all passionate about food, otherwise they would not have joined the group (and other groups, many of them.)  So many food photos to drool over and stories to laugh (or cry) with.  It's a struggle to narrow them down and only pick a few, but I'll do it.  Here are a few of my favorites, in no particular order.

Engineer Baker 

Di's Kitchen Notebook

mix, mix...stir, stir

Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake

Ezra Pound Cake 

~~~~~

And that concludes my passing on of the awards.  I hope you'll go check out these sites, if you aren't reading them already.  It will be time well spent.

One for the Table

Hey, remember that post I did about the hail storm we had and the cocktails we made with the hail stones?

Well check this out...

Pretty cool, huh?  I got an email recently from the managing editor of this online magazine asking if they could cross-post my story. 

Of course I said yes.

And you should also check out the rest of the magazine - lots of interesting stories, restaurant reviews, recipes - all sorts of foodie goodness.

Thank you, One for the Table!

What Is It?

I didn't do anything to these shots other than crop them a bit so you couldn't see the surroundings.

So.

Any guesses?