Category Archives: food and cooking

Around the Internet World

art, food and cooking, music, poetry, women, , ,

More odds and ends from the virtual library or discovery museum out there in digital space. Some of these I found a couple of months ago and then forgot to tell about. My collection has grown to such a size….I better pass these along NOW:

**I probably already told you about the The Poem Farm, which blogger Amy says “…is my poem-playground, a place to share teaching and writing ideas, and a cozy spot to highlight poetry in classrooms. If you are a teacher or a student, please consider sharing here on an upcoming Poetry Friday.” A recent Poetry Friday post is at right.

**Yay! Vindication for my wooden cutting board. Since my wedding I have been using the lovely one my brother made in high school wood shop, and our family always seemed to be healthier than many, so I wasn’t worried. I didn’t dream, though, that wood is actually safer than plastic.

**A performance of Beautiful Bach was the kind of pleasant surprise one gets on Facebook sometimes. I understand the performer made a foot pedal for the chromatic button on his harmonica in order to play as he does here.

**Who couldn’t use help on keeping the family car looking better? I was charmed and inspired by the practical and literally refreshing ideas Sobe Organized gives in these Steps toward a cleaner car.

** The Candy Professor shows us what a variety of real food ingredients was in candy in 1926, compared to what she calls our current “over-chocolated” world.

**Wayside Wanderer posted a thought-provoking sermon excerpt on what makes a truly Strong Woman.

**One of my favorite learning resources that I have mentioned many times in individual blog posts is The Mars Hill Audio Journal. It just occurred to me that I have failed to pass on to my readers an easy and free way to get a taste of what is available through this audio magazine. Though they don’t provide bonus CD tracks any longer on the bimonthly journals, the old listenable tracks are online and ready for anyone to hear at the click of a mouse. Some of my favorite authors and thinkers are on this list, discussing everything from Ents, Mozart, and Hawthorne to Ritalin, reality TV, and Wendell Berry. Maybe someone reading this will get sparked into a discussion after listening to one of these short interviews. Tell me if you do!

Probably no one has time now with holiday or holy-day preparations going on,  to actually look at these pages, but they will keep.

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.