I am having starter drama. My starter has finally stopped smelling like something died in it -- now it smells strong and sour, but entirely edible. I would say, in my limited experience, that it smells right.
HOWEVER. It is NOT rising up. It is not crawling up the sides of the jar. It is not gently doming on the top. It has not increased to 3 cups -- nowhere near. It looks alive -- it is full of little bubbles and all -- but there is a distinct lack of expansion.
Also, it is incredibly liquid. It was a stiff sort of batter , then a less stiff sort of batter, and then -- POOF! -- it turns into something I could drink. You know, if I wanted to. Watery. Sloshing about. I am wondering if I accidentally added water twice on one of these days. I would like to think I am not that dumb, but I am not dumb enough to think that I am not that dumb. Is that dumb?
No, really. I think I might have. It's just... very, very liquid.
I was really hoping that it would be established enough to be refrigerated by the time we went home for 4 days. Because traveling with my starter just doesn't seem like that good of an idea. But if it hasn't expanded by Friday, I think I'll have to throw it out and start over.
It's so sad! I don't want to break up with my starter! But I feel that I have no choice... alas!
My life is so tragic.
Monday, April 14, 2008
starter's game
Saturday, April 12, 2008
i'll probably be the next fleming or something
blargh. i am sick of bad cheese. I swear that mozzarella wasn't that old. and yet there it sat, super duper mcmoldy. And not 'cut off the moldy bits and use the rest' moldy -- and besides, the internet tells me that it's only okay to do that on harder cheeses, like cheddar. apparently poor mozzarella is too squishy.
super. duper. mcmoldy. And my pizza dough was all ready! I could have cried. That's what I get for knowing what I have in my kitchen and not bothering to check.
So I sent William out to fetch me some. Every time I look despairingly out of the kitchen and say, "dear, would you mind..." a little piece of me DIES.
I am a little more dead today.
But yes. Yesterday for dinner we had pizza. Pizza and soda. and it was deeeelicious.
I feel like some folks have wound up with the impression that I am all health-nutty. I was talking about chocolate with one of my coworkers and she said, "wait -- as healthy as you eat, you still like chocolate?" I almost choked. What is this nonsense about me eating "healthy?" I bake cookies and pies on a regular basis, I love chocolate and ice cream and cake -- I like things that taste good. Who doesn't?
And how on earth did she get the idea that I could live without chocolate?
The thing is, I don't like eating gross food. Pizza in a box? Usually gross, although there are some exceptions. Those soft, strangely-colored "cookies" sold at supermarkets? Gross. Shrink-wrapped little debbie cakes? Disgusting. Anything with aspartame? I can freaking taste it -- like somebody sprinkled sour metal shavings into my no-fat yogurt. I don't care how "healthy" they say that is, it is gross. Limp sandwiches that are 90% sprouts? Gross.
Most sodas? Gross, gross, gross. I don't know. I have somehow moved away from liking anything that comes out of a soda fountain. Right now the root beer is about all I can handle, and even that isn't too enjoyable. I don't know what about it tastes so bad -- it's too sweet, too syrupy, or something.
We had Fufuberry instead, and that is some delicious stuff, yo. Props to Jones Soda for the only soda of theirs I really love. Props also to them for all their other, very creative sodas that I don't love at all.
I suppose my food philosophy, if it could be summed up, would center on the fact that I like eating delicious food that doesn't make me feel bad. Food that doesn't make me feel physically bad, like fat-filled meals make me feel heavy and nauseous, and like sugary candies make me feel ill fifteen minutes after I eat them. Food that doesn't gross me out, like anything with lard in it does. Food that doesn't make me feel guilty, like factory-farmed meat or -- well, the category of 'food that makes me feel guilty' seems to be expanding, thanks to my reading choices. Drat.
Things that taste good but feel bad seem like they should be easy to avoid, especially when there are all kinds of yummy foods that make a body feel good. In fact, these days, the only place I have problems is with candy. There are always jars around in the office, and even though I know I'll regret it, I frequently grab a few and gulp them down. And then I regret it.
My own desserts rarely make me feel regretful. It turns out I can eat a fair amount of pie without feeling icky afterwards. Cookies are easy to have in moderation -- they're the right size and everything. And a lot of what I make for dessert starts life as non-threatening fruit, and doesn't get much transformed along the way. Have you ever had broiled grapefruit? (Recipe: Turn on the broiler. Sprinkle as much brown sugar as your sweet tooth desires on top of your grapefruit halves. Pop them under the broiler til they smell delicious and you can't wait any longer. Enjoy.)
Most of the time, I eat food that actually makes me feel good. I'm usually proud of myself for having made it, and I am continuing to discover what sorts of dishes leave me feeling energized and refreshed, and what sorts of things leave me a little bloated or queasy or sleepy or just feeling off. My body certainly doesn't have ascetic tastes -- it's anti-grease and salt, but loves spicy foods, roasted vegetables, dark chocolate after dinner, fruit smoothies, coconut milk, lots of fruit, honey -- even deep-fried things, in moderation. Did you know that if you deep-fry things right, they shouldn't be greasy?
And just like soda doesn't have to be sickly-sweet and cloying, pizza doesn't have to be a greasy, limp mess. Mine was tomato sauce, mozzarella, sauteed onions and red bell pepper, broiled eggplant, and spinach. A bit of canola oil, a bit more olive oil -- no grossness required. I did learn a few things -- I didn't saute the spinach, and I think that if I try that again, I will put the spinach under the cheese. It seems obvious in retrospect, but there was some pretty crunchy spinach involved. But overall, it was good.
The last couple pizzas I had made were thin-crust; good, but not the same as the thick, crisp, chewy crust that my dad makes. I was really craving pizza like I grew up on (I miss all kinds of things!) and I called him to find his recipe, but I couldn't reach him. What to do? I decided to go with the Joy of Cooking recipe, figuring that odds were pretty good he had started from there. If not, hey, it'd still be pizza. And it turned out pretty darn close!
I totally understand that people are reluctant to eliminate tasty things from their diet in favor of low-fat, low-calorie, low-carb, low-pleasure diets that leave them hungry and cranky. Pretty much everybody agrees that those diets aren't good for you, anyway. But why would we seek out foods that make us feel ill, and avoid good, wholesome foods: whole-fat, whole-calorie, whole-carb, whole-pleasure diets that actually nourish?
A live without pizza would be a sad one indeed -- but trading greasy deliveries for fresh ingredients, a crust just how you want it, and a far more flavorful experience... how is that hard? Why is that unusual?
Thursday, April 10, 2008
mucking around
Last night I made potato pancakes with carrots, peas, bell pepper and corn in them. They held together poorly and were incredibly greasy. It's a pity, because I think there was a lot of potential there -- even in that sad state, they tasted pretty good. William, of course, liked them -- greasy hash browns with vegetables? What's not to love?
While trying to figure out how to made them, I looked up recipes for classic potato pancakes, for croquettes, and for boxty. Heh. Boxty. I've had boxty... they're, um, potato pancakes. With a funnier name! Next time, instead of mucking around (fun though that is), I think I will just straight-up make croquettes. Well. I think that's what I should do next time... but in all probability, I will just muck around.
I tell myself that "just mucking around" is actually a complex learning process in which I am experimenting in a natural and holistic way to discover what works and what doesn't in a kitchen, and that if I keep it up, I will someday be a cook -- someone who does more than just follow recipes. It will give me a deeper understanding of the true nature of cooking and allow me to follow my whims, and the constraints of my pantry, and truly create dishes of my own. I strongly suspect, however, that it really is just mucking around.
Speaking of just mucking around, I have 4 pielets in the oven. Pielettes? Minipies? I could say tarts, but they're sort of... I dunno. Taller than that.
One is apple/strawberry/raspberry, one apple/strawberry/pineapple, one banana/strawberry, and one -- aw, shoot, what is that one, hold on while I check -- right, apple/pineapple/raspberry. The raspberries aren't that important, because I'm pretty sure they'll be delicious no matter what -- the real experiment is apple/strawberry vs. apple/strawberry/pineapple vs apple/pineapple. The banana/strawberry is a wildcard.
That was a lot of slashes. The point is, I am just mucking around and pretending it is An Experiment. True story? I wanted pies. Those were the fruits I had. I wasn't confident that any of those combinations would work well, I didn't have that much of any fruit, I improvised.
And, you know, instead of mixing the fruit in bowls with sugar and cornstarch, just put the fruit in and haphazardly sprinkled the dry stuff over it. Sometimes I put in bits of butter... sometimes I didn't. Gosh. If these turn out it will be entirely despite me.
(Dinner tonight was peanut-sauced noodles topped with bell pepper, carrot and tofu. It was going to have bean sprouts, too, but... I forgot. It's like when I put things in the fridge, they don't exist any more! At least I turned the oven off this time... and didn't manage to set off any fire alarms. I'd say that's an improvement.)
ETA: Having sampled the apple-pineapple and apple-strawberry pie babies, I can authoritatively report two facts: 1) Camila really likes pineapple pie, but neither Andrew nor Willikers did, and 2) Camila should have been much, much more haphazard in her sprinkling of cornstarch. By which I mean those things were JUICY.
did you see how that was in the third person? That's right. That's because I was being SCIENTIFIC and OBJECTIVE.
Ayup.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
ryre-cracker
that wasn't even a remotely good pun. What's wrong with me?
I threw together a quick dinner of rice and beans tonight, all braced for running out the door to our Balboa lesson but, alas, our instructor has a bronchial infection, so no dancing for William and Camila. Instead I lay on the couch reading Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (she makes her own CHEESE!) and then I got up and baked some crackers.
On the back of my Bob's Red Mill Organic Dark Rye Flour, purchased for the starter, there is a recipe for Rye Crackers that states, "These crackers are far superior to any commercial brand cracker we have tasted. You will love these crackers." You will love these crackers -- simple declarative statement, without the exclamation point that would push it over to the overblown-copy zone. I would love these crackers? Why, how could I resist?
(Speaking of that starter, I fed it this evening. It smelled bad. A 'faint citrus odor' my ass. Rotten citrus, maybe. I tried to think happy thoughts towards it but I strongly suspected I was cultivating rotten flour in a jar. Ah well. Onward and upward...)
With a few alterations for the sparseness of my pantry (no turbinado sugar or caraway seeds here), these are
Bob's Red Mill's Rye Crackers
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 T sugar
1 tsp baking powder
2 T sesame seeds
4 T margarine
3 T milk
Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine the dry ingredients, including seeds. With a pastry knife, work in the margarine until fine. Stir in the milk, form a ball, and roll the dough out between wax paper (or greased parchment paper) 'til 1/8-1/16th of an inch thick. Cut into whatever shape your little heart desires, prick with a fork, and gently transfer to an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 5-6 minutes until lightly browned on edges. Cool on a rack if you have one, in which case poor Camila envies you, and then store in an airtight container.
Gee, that was quick! The result isn't really something I'd eat on it's own -- it's a little rye-y for me-- but it is delicious with honey. I think I'll mess around with the kinds of flour in that basic recipe, then try out some other cracker recipes for comparison. It's so easy and quick, why not?
I salted one and handed it to William, who bit into it with a curious look before saying, "it has a wheat-thin-like consistency, which I approve of." (Doesn't he sound like a hoighty-toighty connoisseur? true story: Camila sucks at spelling french words even more than she does at pronouncing them)
Then he looked at me with something approaching awe, and said, "You can make anything!"
Nope. nope I can't. But I'd sure like to try! I think I am approaching Andrew's parody of me, creating every meal item myself -- shaping grains of rice out of flour. But I don't mind one bit. I like eating food I made so much more than eating food other people made.
Seriously. Why pay someone to do the cooking for you? Cooking is so much fun! It's such a rewarding experience, so closely tied to our human identity. You might as well pay someone to tend your garden -- oh, wait -- might as well pay someone to raise your kids -- oh, wait. Truly, though, you might as well pay someone to live your love life for you so you don't have to cope with the distractions. How long till we reach that point, too, 'till we take that enjoyable aspect of the human experience and outsource it to someone who doesn't care?
Because really, who cares as much about what you eat as you do? And if they care less, why do you think they'd do a better job of feeding you?
As I said, I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and quite enjoying it. The move from Tucson to Virginia nicely mirrors the one I'm preparing to go on this July, which makes it still more interesting. The book is giving me guilty thoughts about organic-ness... I'm running the budget calculations in my head as we speak. Unfortunately, Saturday workdays preclude most farmer's markets, but I hear there's a Sunday one in Ahwatukee...
Most worrisome, though, is this: I find my thoughts turning to CHEESE. "That's all it takes to make cheese?" Cogs turning, gears grinding...
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
hot potato
I made potato bread last night and forgot about it THREE TIMES, resulting in a sadly neglected dough that produced an ill-shapen loaf. It was fine potato bread, I guess. I sort of thought that since all the potato bread I'd ever had was store-bought, "real" potato bread would be better. I thought it would be some sort of magical discovery.
Instead, I discovered that potato bread does, indeed, have a potato in it. Also, that I still don't really like it.
Also, I made eggplant parmesan last night and burnt EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. I fried them in batches. You'd think I would have gotten it right once!
All in all, I didn't have a very successful night. The pasta was okay -- penne with red pepper and spinach. I think I managed to not mess that up (okay, I could have used less oil.) But other than that? Gosh. Downright disheartening.
Then today, I left the oven on all day long. 7 a.m. until 6 p.m... at 400 freaking degrees! It's a wonder I haven't burnt down the condo -- heck, it's a wonder I haven't burnt down the whole city. The apartment was 90 degrees by the time I got home, with the fans running and the door open. Sheesh.
Tonight I began a sourdough starter, and I am doubtful. I am looking at the thick, gloppy mess of flour and water in a jar, and distinctly doubting that it will ever become a magical leavening agent. Call me a Negative Nancy, and send my little starter happy thoughts to counteract my bad ones, will you?
Sunday, April 6, 2008
on kneading and needs
A while back, Steve suggested that I make Rosemary Focaccia out of that great bread book I checked out from the library, and boy, would I love to! The bread looks delicious, and so many people have reported catastrophes with it that I am helplessly tempted... I do love a good, dangerous challenge.
The problem? The problem is that the recipe requires a stand mixer. Requires -- not recommends, not suggests, not encourages, prefers or requests. I don't know squat about bread baking (yet), but even I can tell that something is strange with this one. 2 cups of water... 2 and 3/4 cups of flour. And that combines to make a dough??
Not by hand, it sure doesn't. That's a dough that you mix in a Kitchen-Aid and pour into the pan. That's a dough that I would love to mix in a Kitchen-Aid, if only I had one.
I once thought stand mixers were silly. I thought they were old, from when mixers were so heavy you couldn't hold them by hand, and now outdated. I wondered why anybody would want them, save the extremely lazy, because how hard is it to hold a mixer in place?
Now that I bake more than cookies, though, I want one so freaking badly. There is only so much my hands can do, only so much my hand-held can do... sometimes, you just need a machine.
Strange thing for me to confess! I also wondered, until maybe two or three weeks ago, why anybody would want to knead their bread in a machine. Breadmaker, stand mixer, knead-0-matic... by any name, it seemed to me like a way to take kneading away from me. I love kneading dough -- love it, love it, love it. I've never been able to meditate, take deep breaths and clear my mind, sit still and organize my thoughts... none of that. I get restless. I get bored.
When I'm kneading, though, I can totally immerse myself in the rhythm of my hands, and everything I've been thinking about is suddenly flowing through me, instead of getting backlogged in my brain. As I watch and feel the dough make an incredible transformation from a sticky, floury, shaggy mess to a smoothly elastic ball that feels downright alive, I feel myself making a similar transition -- from disorganized mess to a smoother, calmer, stronger self.
Why would I let a machine steal that away from me?
Lately, however, my mind has been changing. I've started thinking a little less about myself enjoying baking, and a little more about the bread itself, and how delicious it could be. A lot of the recipes I find most appealing -- artisan breads, slow rises -- have very sticky doughs. In fact, almost all of the recipes in Beranbaum's Bread Bible say, "knead the dough. The dough will be very sticky at this point." She could continue, "In fact, it will be so sticky you kind of want to kill yourself instead of kneading it, but please don't. Suffer through for five minutes, then let it rest for 15 minutes. I say that it will be easier to work with then, but that's really in the hopes that the placebo effect will make you feel better about it. Life will still suck. You should buy a stand mixer."
Kneading dough that sticky, especially without a proper kneading board and without a bench knife, isn't a calming, relaxing experience at all. It is just plain frustrating. I have to admit a certain amount of defeat, and accept that I will have to add a little bit too much flour -- there's no way around it. Even with that capitulation, it feels like I am battling the dough, not coaxing it to perfection.
Those doughs are the ones where I need a stand mixer most -- not to do the work for me, but to do the work far better than I can.
Last Monday, when I set out to bake some bread, I made a cake from The Bread Bible -- dunno why it was there, either, pretending to be a "quick bread" -- but when I went looking for a bread recipe, that "very sticky" line kept turning me away. I wanted to knead bread, damn it -- wanted to feel the tacky dough under my fingers, feel the dough changing under my hands. More importantly, I didn't want to wrestle with a gloopy mess. So I made a version of The Simple Dollar's bread recipe instead. Less delicious? Mm, probably. Maybe. But it satisfied my need to knead, and it turned out just fine.
Sometimes, I need a bread recipe that will give me a calming experience, a rewarding tactile sensation, a great knead.
The rest of the time, I need a stand mixer.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
pease porridge gross
Well, I've had a pretty delightful week away from the computer. I'll have some sort of a proper post soon, but for now I will just share two not-delightful things I have learned in the past week.
1) Canned vegetables are GROSS. I know. I should have known this, somehow -- I feel like I should have had some sort of warning sensation in my gut when I contemplated the cans. The things is, I have a natural distrust of anything canned, bagged or boxed. Everything but fresh fruits and vegetables, basically, makes me suspicious.
But canned beans work pretty excellently, and frozen veggies are working out far better than I had thought. I thought I would be open-minded. I thought I would give canned vegetables a try.
EW. Just plain ew. How did I miss the part where canned vegetables have not only already been cooked, they've already been OVERcooked? I am so foolish. I opened the can of green beans and THREW THEM OUT. I never throw out food!
Um. On that note, I accidentally served my boyfriend and his family rice and beans topped with rotten cheese. Man, did I ever want to cry. I'll be throwing out cheese more frequently, now. Or maybe I just won't buy pre-grated cheese -- my cheese blocks aren't stinky yet. We bought pre-grated stuff because I'd been recruiting William as my grater and he really hated it, but I think I'll just grate my own cheese from now on. It's not worth it.
Anyway, back to the canned grossness. I threw out the green beans. I opened the peas and decided there was no way I could add anything of that color and that squishiness to a delicious curry. The next day, I tried the only thing I could think of: pea soup. Blended with some veggie stock and heated with onions, carrots, salt, pepper and thyme, the result was edible... just.
Moral of the story: Canned vegetables will never again feature in Camila's kitchen pantry. That is all.
2) A camera enthusiastically swung on its strap becomes a camera enthusiastically dropped into the red dust of Sedona becomes a camera enthusiastically broken. It was off! The lens was closed! I was holding the strap, I thought we were all so safe!
Oh, it is so sad. It makes sad little noises like whirr-whirr-whirr-whirr tik-tik-tiktiktik when it tries to open the lens... it makes the same sad little noises trying to close it. It won't close at all, now.
This weekend I will take it to the nice camera store next door and see if they can fix it. I do hope they can. I can't afford a good replacement camera. And I'd just learned how to use this one properly!
Oh, it is so, so sad. I just look at it, permanently open, lens staring like the single eye of a dead cyclops, and I want to cover it with a coin or something. Do dead cameras go to heaven?
No! Don't say that, Camila! There's still hope!
It can be saved!
I hope.... *sniffle*
