Category Archives: food and cooking

Book Page — and Looking Ahead

books, food and cooking, quotes

Whew! It took me hours, but I finally got the Books and Reviews page updated. It is linked from the sidebar at left in the list of Pages on This Blog, along with the Recipes. So far I have only those two extra pages, but I hope to add a couple more eventually. Today was a chore because after I searched through two years’ worth of blogs to find what reviews might exist, and created the links, the whole mess disappeared. Tonight after dinner, while my husband was figuring out his new cell phone, I did it all over again and managed not to lose it.

It appears that 2009 was a better year for reading and reviewing. That isn’t surprising, as I’ve had so much else going on this year to keep my mind and attention in other places. I wonder what 2011 will bring?

Just this week I’ve been meditating on the benefits of using up the food I have in the cupboards and freezer while I resist the impulse to stock up, a practice that isn’t necessary or even helpful for our shrunken family. While I was plotting how to simplify this way in the kitchen, I read a discussion among avid readers about the advantages of re-reading good books. No doubt there would be a lot of nourishment for my mind and heart in doing that, and I’m looking at the shelves with the renewing of old literary friendships in mind.

There is no excuse for me complaining that I don’t get to read enough — just look at all the fun I’ve been having just in the last two years. I should go to my paper records and put more titles from the last decade into digital form just for the joy of remembering all the book food I’ve tasted and loved.

Anyone who has a book collection and a garden 
wants for nothing.
~Cicero

Owls, Lepers, and More Around the Net

art, birds, books, crafts, food and cooking, humor,

In just two days’ tootling around some of my favorite places on the Internet I have found items worth sharing in several categories: humor, animal photos, Bible study, a recipe and a quilt — just a sampling of this week’s surprises in that wide world.

Gumbo Lily shows photos of the darling owls in her own back yard. She often encounters wildlife to capture with her camera, illustrating the ranch life she captures with her pen (um…keyboard).

Angie got me laughing again, this time about Internet spam, of all things. Spam with a Scottish twist.

M.K.’s recent post To Touch a Leper, got me thinking on the wonderful and mysterious fact of Christ’s life and how it is health and cleanness.

A quilter-blogger Who Loves Baby Quilts and doesn’t own a sewing machine made a sweet mini quilt she refers to as a mug rug. Now I know what to call my own treasured little rug given to me some time ago. I’m showing both sides, which I have tried to keep pretty by not using it when my mug contains cocoa.

Last, a simple and simply yummy-sounding Greek dessert that requires not much more than opening a container of good yogurt.

Chocolate & Pumpkin & Spice

food and cooking, ,

Everyone, it seems, is talking and writing about every variety of pumpkin bread possible, which they have baked and posted recipes for, and the (pumpkin?) seed sprouted in my mind and bore fruit last night, when I put all these ideas together and came up with my own batch that was pretty much perfect. My thanks to all of you who made my mouth water and my imagination start working.

Pumpkin & Chocolate Chip Muffins
This made 30 smallish muffins and two mini-loaves

3 1/2 cups unbleached flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 29-oz can pumpkin (about 3 1/2 cups)
1/3 cup white sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
3/4 cup olive oil
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups Ghirardelli 60% cacao chocolate chips
3 cups toasted walnuts, chopped

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice in a medium bowl; whisk to blend. Using electric mixer, beat pumpkin and sugars until blended. Gradually beat in eggs, vanilla, oil and ginger. Stir dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture alternating with buttermilk in three additions. Stir in nuts and chips last.

Fill lined muffin cups 3/4 full with batter; likewise mini loaf pans that have been greased or lined with parchment.

Bake muffins at 375 degrees, 30-45 minutes, depending on size of cup and whether your oven is convection, until a toothpick comes out clean — though it can be hard to tell with all that chocolate in there! Bake the mini loaves about an hour. Cool in pans.

Upon eating the first muffin I thought I hadn’t put in enough spice to suit, but today they were the perfect combination of tender and moist, with lots of soft dark chocolate not quite melted in, and dreamy flavor, probably just the right amount of spice. I wouldn’t mind if they had still less sugar, but I’ll be cautious about changing that ingredient too much and maybe not liking the resulting change in the crumb texture.

I took this recipe at epicurious.com for my jumping-off place, after reading all the reviews that told the many ways people changed the original. I mostly combined many of their changes to customize mine; and I was in such a hurry to get my loaves and muffins done before my bedtime, I forgot to take a picture. This tiger does have something to do with the recipe, because he was carved from a pumpkin by Pippin some years ago.

After Mr. Glad and I enjoyed my creations with breakfast, most of the remainder went into the freezer to bring out when there are more people around to enjoy them. I hope that will be soon, but I’ve had my fix, which I think will keep me for a while.

Recipes Page Has Appeared

food and cooking

I’m headed to the mountains this week for a few days, but I managed to put together a page of recipe links, found now on the sidebar. I’ll have to transcribe the Ratatouille recipe later and add it along with others by and by.

At church we just had our yearly international food festival, and I baked a couple of things for the bakery which I’ll tell about, too, illustrated with pictures taken in process and upon completion. It was quite fun to bake goodies that didn’t sit around here tempting me for days; they were consumed within a few hours of the start of the party. This year I didn’t even eat any baklava. The memory of the perfect rendition of baklava that a member of our parish bakes was still lingering and satisfying.