Category Archives: food and cooking

Remembering rescues, planning for success.

Christmas, food and cooking, , ,

This morning my daughters and I were chatting online about cookies, and sharing pictures or files of recipes, for the sake of one daughter who asked for one with simple ingredients, to fill out a cookie platter. It was a lot of fun to stir up memories together of Cookies We Have Loved, without having to mess up the kitchen.

I may yet make a mess with cookie dough in there. One key to getting cookies made is to put the sticks of butter out to soften overnight; then there’s a gentle pressure to use it as soon as possible the next day — or at least, to mix up the dough, which might be baked a different day. What I shouldn’t do is try to cook the whole day long, and be on my feet doing it.

Many of you know how I often try to rescue failed kitchen projects, sometimes making unique treats from cookie disasters. This story I wrote about that more than ten years ago is a funny example. But it’s also kind of sad, because of not being able to repeat the successful rescues. But with cookies, one has to enjoy memories in any case, because we can’t just go on eating a new one, can we??

From twelve years ago:

At the beginning of November I had a cookie craving, and it occurred to me that I might as well make one of our favorite kinds of Christmas cookies; I could eat a few and freeze most of them, and be ahead of the to-do list. Our family’s holiday traditions include platters piled with various kinds of cookies, most of which won’t be seen again until the next Christmas. For this first session of baking I chose the soft Ginger Spice Cookies that feature an intoxicating combination of spices and diced candied ginger as well.

 Something went wrong, or maybe a few things. I had made a note on the recipe card suggesting that I cut the sugar back another 1/4 cup from the previous alteration, because, “they are plenty sweet.” I am reminded of the story about the farmer who discovered he could add some sawdust to his horse’s feed and save money that way. He kept adding more and more sawdust and the horse seemed to do fine with it, until one day it died.

The recipe must have been just about perfect before I changed it just a little, and then the cookies came out terrible. Was it only the lack of sweetness that made them taste strongly of baking soda with pockets of overwhelming clove flavor? Or perhaps I hadn’t mixed the dough enough? I thought I would have to throw them out.

But wait – couldn’t they be used for something? If I dried them in the oven, and ground them finely in the food processor, I could use them as the basis for different cookies….so I tried just that. To the fine crumbs I added a cube of butter, an egg, and extra sugar and flour. A little more ground ginger and a tiny bit of cardamom. Then instead of dropping the dough by teaspoonfuls I chilled and rolled it, into trees. Now we have crisp gingerbread cookies that surprise the eater with an occasional tiny piece of candied ginger, and that warm your mouth with an even more complex and winning flavor. Alas, never to be duplicated.

This made me brave enough to tackle the other failed cookie product that had been sitting in the freezer for awhile, since the time I made some Russian Tea Cakes but only put in half as much flour as they needed. The buttery, pecan-studded cookie crumbs I had stuck in a jar in the freezer, being unwilling at the time to give up on them.

Now I dug them out and experimented in a similar way, adding an egg, sugar, flour, baking powder and lemon zest. I tried to roll this dough, too, but it would not hold together, so I shaped disks and stuck a pecan half on each one. Behold! Another new and non-repeatable Glad Christmas cookie, which the man of the house has tasted and approved. I do hope nonetheless that I can avoid making a yearly tradition of the Cookie Rescue.

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Back to December of 2024… Here (pictured above) is a cookie from the New York Times cooks that I’d like to try making this year: Ginger Cheesecake Cookies

If this one were to flop somehow, I think I would save the pieces to use in a trifle — Haha! Don’t believe it. I have done that before, and have I ever made a trifle of those tidbits? No, I just snack on them until they are gone… So, let’s hope they work out as intact cookies. I promise not to cut back on the sugar very much.

I could have got halfway through a cookie recipe in the time I’ve spent thinking about cookies this afternoon. But no, my butter wasn’t soft. So I’ll take a couple of sticks out of the refrigerator right now, and who knows… maybe tonight….


Hoping your Christmas preparations are peaceful.
I love seeing everyone’s plans and decorations.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!

I like rain and roasted onions.

books, food and cooking, home, weather, , , , , , , , , , ,

Rain… rain… rain… It’s been raining All. Day. It’s night now and still raining. I’ve been exulting in it, because I didn’t have any responsibilities that required my going out. I could tend the fire, chat with my daughters online about their weather, roast onions, read, and even accomplish one housecleaning task that has been hanging over my head for months: cleaning the ceiling exhaust fan in a bathroom. Yippee!

The nodding violet that I brought indoors last week before freezing weather arrived looked so lovely with the rainy light behind it, I had to take its picture.

Sir Gawain by Howard Pyle

On the table by the violet are a few of the books I bought to go with an online course I am taking this fall: “Christian Wonder Tales.” It is taught by Martin Shaw, the mythologist and storyteller whom I met at the Symbolic World Summit last winter. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight didn’t get in the picture, but is another title he recommended, and I have it upstairs.

Who knows if I will read any of these books to the end — I haven’t even finished The King of Ireland’s Son, by Padraic Colum, which is quite delightful. Also perfect for listening to, because the narrator Gerard Doyle’s Irish brogue, telling the stories-within-stories as is the custom with Irish stories, has me journeying entranced from the Irish cottage to the castle and back again, meeting mysterious characters and challenging assignments around every bend in the road.

Now to the topic of food: Back when my friend Susan was also my housemate, sometimes I would walk in the front door to another sort of captivating story, the aroma of which was the essential part. What are you cooking?? I would ask, drawn immediately into the kitchen, and it took a few repetitions of this encounter before my nose remembered what she had told me: “It’s only roasted onions!” I eventually had to start making them myself.

(Above, onions in my kitchen as it was 28 years ago. Notice bread rising in pans at left. The only thing that is the same now is cast iron pans always on the stove top.)

To keep up with my appetite for them, I’d need to roast a batch of onions once a week, but it ends up being more like twice a year. As soon as they are out of the oven I always serve myself a little bowl of them, which seems to be about one onion’s worth… or two — so I usually double the recipe below. Do you roast onions? You can find many recipes online; here is my version:

ROASTED ONIONS

3 large onions, yellow or red
2 tablespoons olive or other oil
1 tablespoon balsamic or other vinegar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper to taste
(1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme) – I never add this

Cut the onions vertically into quarters or sixths, and then slice those wedges crosswise as thick as you want; I make mine 1/8 to 1/3 inch thick. Toss them in a bowl with the other ingredients and roast in a sheet pan at 375 to 400 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally, until they are as brown as looks good to you. I think sometimes, in an effort to get them crispier, I have overcooked them and made them a little tough.

This evening I didn’t use balsamic vinegar, because recently I was given an extra special bottle of “plain” red wine vinegar with a noble heritage. Just as bakers like to pass their sourdough starter around to friends, so chefs and winemakers often share a vinegar mother (also called a vinegar scoby). My vinegar was fermented with a mother whose mother belonged to Alice Waters, and whose grandmother grew in Julia Child’s kitchen. Does that make my onions taste better? You know, I think they might just be the best I’ve ever made!

I’m enchanted by amaranth.

food and cooking, other gardens, , ,

The morning that I was walking home while looking at the clouds, I took a slight detour to see what was going on at my favorite neighborhood gardener’s front yard. I met her briefly once when I was standing gawking, and learned that she grows nursery stock to sell to local stores. She obviously loves to plant all kinds of things for her own enjoyment as well, such as these poppies I wrote about one May; but last week my focus was on the gorgeous amaranth and its relatives.

I believe these are types of Quail Grass, Celosia argentea, which is in the amaranth family. I read that in some places, especially parts of Africa, it is “cultivated as a nutritious leafy green vegetable.” In Nigeria it is known as “soko yokoto,” meaning that it will “make husbands fat and happy.”

This garden also was lush with perfect dahlias, cosmos blooming extravagantly, and Hyacinth Beans. Do you know about these? The gardener had three arching trellises along the walk going to the front door, each with a different edible plant climbing on it. These are the hyacinth beans, which were on the arbor closest to the sidewalk:

I did manage to sprout amaranth seeds in my planter boxes once, but I think something ate them before they got very big. I wonder if my neighbor collects the seeds to eat? Maybe next year I will experiment by growing the usual amaranth and quail grass, too.

I no longer have a husband to feed, but if I get amaranth growing in my garden, any of you is welcome to come and pick a bunch to try out in your own kitchen and marriage.

The languid skipper sets an example.

food and cooking, my garden, , , , ,

When I was pruning the salvia in front, this skipper was languidly sipping from the same. You can see its proboscis going right down in. The creature was definitely not feeling skippy… I wonder if skippers die in winter? Did it lay eggs somewhere already?

So much is going on in the garden. These irises really should have been divided again — but, already? I’m afraid they will have to wait until next year.

 

I ended up with so much lemon verbena — what wealth! This is a very nostalgic herb to me, because of when I was in Turkey riding non-air-conditioned buses across Anatolia, and first experienced its delicious scent, though I didn’t know what it was. The bus attendant would walk up and down the aisles every hour or so with a big bottle of something like cologne, and if you held your hands cupped he would sprinkle a tablespoon or so into them. I followed the example of others and quickly splashed it on my face and neck for refreshment. Later, when I returned home, I brought an empty bottle with me and kept it for many years, just so I could take a whiff from time to time.

It was decades before I matched that scent to the lemon verbena plant. I mentioned in the summer how I had made lemon verbena paste, and last week I made lemon verbena simple syrup, trying to use a lot of the leaves before they fall off when the bush goes dormant. Now I wish I had just dried them. Making tea is the obvious thing, but for some reason I never did, though I had dried a few leaves last year and they were sitting on the counter. Last week I made a pot of tea with them and loved it. It’s wonderful just “plain.”

A few months ago my neighbor Kim broke a big stem off a plant on her patio and handed it to me. “Stick this in the ground,” she suggested. Instead, I cut the stem into three parts and put them in water, wherre I noticed they had made a lot of roots pretty quickly. One day I spied this huge flower cluster at the back of the jar by the window. Kim says this is a Plectranthus ecklonii, and her plant never gets blooms like that. I don’t know what I will do with it, but I found out that it is not terribly frost tender.

Plectranthus ecklonii

 

The olive that I repotted with great effort is looking healthy again. I guess my pruning wasn’t too bad, either. I do enjoy pruning, but I’m glad I don’t have to do all of it, or get on ladders anymore for that task. I can just prune the smaller bushes and leave the big ones for my helper.

Recently I did prune all four dwarf pomegranates, in advance of their dormant pruning that will happen later, because my new landscaper consultant told me I should “lift their skirts.” Ahem… is that common parlance in the gardening world? I had never heard the term, but I knew what he meant.

I am thrilled that my Japanese anemones (below) are putting on their best show ever, though they still are not robust — I gave the four of them extra water this year, and they have been getting more sun since the pine tree was thinned. If I feed them a little maybe they will do even better next year.

I have lots more to do before I will feel prepared for winter, but that skipper put me in touch with the reality that I, too, am slowing down. Most likely I won’t get “everything” done. And I guess that will have to be okay!