File this under useless information

So, I've had this pomegranate that I picked up with a rare spirit of adventure sitting on my counter for a couple weeks, mocking me.



I remember having some of this fruit as a girl and liking it. But I also have a more recent memory where I tried to reproduce this childhood experience and something wasn't right. I wasn't sure if my trouble was cutting into the fruit, or just with the taste.

Either way, I thought I'd try again.

Believe it or not, there is a correct way to cut these and it makes a difference.



Cut vertically through the stem (core?). Also, it might be good, if you value your clothing, to wear an apron or possibly an entire hazmat suit. This baby is messy. Lucky for me, I have no clothes that aren't already covered with stains and holes. It's my signature look.

Make another vertical cut and then pull the seeds away from the membranes by hand.



One tip I read was to drop the seeds in a bowl of water and the membranes should separate and float to the top. Kind of a scam but worked some of the time.


My kitchen looked like a violent crime scene by the time I'd finished.



After all that, I didn't find the seeds that wonderful. Love the flavor but hate the chewy texture. They taste just like those berries you know you probably shouldn't sample while wandering around in the woods. The kind where someone yells, "Hey, don't eat those!" That kind.

But, you know who really did like them?



Innocent little children. They devoured those seeds and screamed for more.

Dont worry, be happy now

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought,
and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G. K. Chesterton

I'm feeling less than thankful at the moment. Really kind of sick to my stomach over some bad news today. Not earth-shattering-someone's-dying kind of news, just car-trouble-money-stressfulness. An ideal time to focus on other things. And hope that it helps.

Around noon today, the sun poked out. I assumed it was fleeting and ran to get my camera.



Trying to keep ahead of Sadie's ravenous wailing (if I let her she would eat every food item in the house, perishable and non) and frantic signs for "MORE, MORE!", I snapped a few pictures of my favorite flower. Who cares if they're a little brown around the edges? They manage a cheerfulness I could never achieve.



After getting Adam settled at the table with food, the sun was still around so I snapped a few more pictures of my latest knitting obsession. The boy hat. So far, so good. And the yarn (Malabrigo) is just right.



I'm looking forward to making a couple of these, maybe even three if I can stretch 2 skeins that far.

Even though I'm still getting the occasional tomato out of my own garden, it was nice to get 3 gorgeous, ripe ones all at once, along with some peppers, from a friend of Keith's.



Salsa came to mind and I tried this recipe, via Smitten Kitchen. It was perfect.


(A food photographer I am not)

Because we somehow had an excess of milk (that never happens), I made some yogurt today. It's really just a few minutes of stirring and keeping it warm for a few hours after that. Believe me, it tastes a lot better than it looks here.



Drew was supposed to have his first soccer practice on Wednesday but it was canceled and rescheduled twice since then because of rain. It is several miles away and I wouldn't even have attempted it myself without a car but Keith was home today and decided he could do it. By bike. With all the boys. He is braver than I.


I'm glad I recently finished my custom safety flag for our bike trailer.



Sadie and I hung out at home and listened to her cry for a couple hours. Idyllic. Like in the movies.

But I did manage to get a photo of her boots in the three seconds that she wore them.



Now I'm sitting here trying not to bite my nails as it gets darker and darker and the boys aren't home yet. Back to square one.

Refreshment

I didn't have a great camera yesterday but I still want to mention one of the ways we tried to beat the heat.

I saw a recipe for Watermelon Granitas on Pioneer Woman and with a watermelon sitting in the fridge, the timing was just right.



I didn't have limes so I used a lemon and it came out great. Watermelon, cut up, then pureed with a little lemon juice and a couple tablespoons of sugar. Freeze it and scrape it up with a fork.

Serve!

One (or two, or three) ingredient ice-cream

One ingredient ice-cream. It couldn't possibly be any good. I figured it had to be one of those nasty, health tricks like substituting carob for chocolate or applesauce for oil. Especially when the one ingredient is bananas.

But I bookmarked it anyway. We always seem to have one or two random bananas hanging around and, at the very least, it could be a good way to use them up.

This morning I gave Ethan the task of reading the recipe and performing the first few steps while I was busy with something else. You'd think I asked him to decipher hieroglyphics. This child needs more time in the kitchen.

If you ever need a few (hundred) yawns, get your eight-year-old to cut two bananas into small rounds. Like watching the grass grow. S O S L O W.



Ethan was under the mistaken impression that we were supposed to then cook the bananas. Good thing I'd read the directions ahead of time. We stuck them in the freezer instead.

Late afternoon we took them out, popped them in my ancient food processor and chopped, as directed. Behold, creamy bananas! Delicious all by themselves.

Ethan insisted we add peanut butter as the link suggests and if he'd had his way we would have thrown in any other sugary substance we had lying around. I let him add some caramel sauce, we returned it to the freezer to harden up a little and after dinner it was done.



Quite good, really. Not ice cream but not carob either.

How bout them apples?

I almost never buy books new, what with this little thing we have called a library. Especially not recipe books, thanks to Al Gore's invention and all.

This book is one exception I treated myself to years ago after reading reviews on various blogs.



It is the happiest, most charming cookbook I've ever seen. Worth buying just for the photography. Almost makes cooking seem like something I'd like to spend time on.


The recipes? Oh yeah. I've tried a few. They've all been good.



The other night the cupboards were suddenly quite bare, the masses were grumbling and I went to this book for help. Apple bread. We had three apples left, one turned out to be rotten but only two were needed. Success!

Relatively healthy and really very good.

There were only a few crumbs left for us to fight over the next morning.

Happenings

I haven't reported about the syrup experiment because it was largely a failure. I'm really not sure what went wrong. We knew we wouldn't get much sap because it was late in the season. I was hoping it would be a good practice run for next year.

We had a little less than a gallon to boil and figured from research that it would produce about half a cup of real syrup. When it boiled down to that amount, I tested the syrup. It was sweet and starting to turn brown (a definite improvement over the sap itself which Ethan declared "tastes like watery tree") but still quite watery so I let it boil a little longer. Too long, in fact. It became impossibly thick.

The real tragedy is that, thick or thin, the syrup had a strange aftertaste and just didn't taste very maple-y. Sweet but strange. Maybe we have the wrong kind of trees or maybe they are diseased? I don't know. Disappointing.

In other news, we have started the process of getting Sadie evaluated for early intervention services. If she qualifies, she will receive services for free in the home, so, in spite of all the red tape, it's worth a try. Since my initial call to the program a couple weeks ago, she is rolling over and becoming slowly more mobile. We've been working hard with her.

Next Friday is her evaluation and really I'm not sure whether I want her to qualify or not.

Yesterday, Sadie clapped for the first time. For Ethan. She was sitting on the kitchen floor and Ethan was playing with her as I raced around throwing food together for dinner. Ethan called out, "She's doing it! She's clapping!" Drew and Adam came running and we all surrounded her, clapping along and exclaiming. Sadie screamed and gurgled with delight. One of those moments that makes you happy to be right where you are.

Heart day

Bear with me and my blog, if you will. I'm feeling all sorts of design indecision lately. Wanting to go Word Press, change the name, find a focus, something. Seven year itch, maybe? More on that later.

I have been systematically plowing through old magazines. Really! Just not a lot to blog about. I've saved several ideas and happily thrown the rest away. I keep finding that many of the recipes or projects I save are also online somewhere.

One success was a recipe from an old issue of Living. Good for a little valentines day fun yesterday. Time consuming but simple enough and pleasing to everyone's palate.
























The rolling and cutting is always a hit. We even got to poke holes with a fork in these cookies.



















I'd have to say my favorite part of this valentine's day was not the ten pounds of Fun Dip and pre-fab cards Ethan carted home from school or the box of plastic bling and sugar contributed by Drew's classmates today.

It was an impromptu little tea party in the corner of our playroom brought to us by Sadie's longer-than-average nap. Sitting with Drew and Adam in a patch of sunlight, enjoying the fruits of our labor.

Blizzard baking

My lofty February goal is to go through a few (purposely vague is good) old magazines lurking in dusty corners. We'll try out a few ideas that inspire, with reviews to follow here. The rest I will rid myself of forever.

The only exception being my Martha Stewart Kids magazines. Those are pure gold. I'll hang on to them for a little longer.
























We attempted homemade pretzels today from the September/October 2004 issue. A good activity for kids warming up from cold snow play. The boys were happy to help with rolling out the dough and brushing on the topping. We made four salty pretzels and four with a sugar cinnamon mix. They were excellent.

A kitchen success

Is it still considered blogging when you only visit your blog to mess around with the header once a month or so? Also, when I change the title font html, why does the change only show up on my laptop and not on other computers? Doesn't make sense. And is there any legitimacy to my feeling abused upon discovering another blog with the same super-original title as my own? Seriously. Because I have exclusive rights and all.

Deep breath.

There have been some halfway blogworthy events around here but not so much time, energy or motivation to make them interesting in print. Even reading some of my favorite blogs has been a challenge to my attention span lately. Ah, the shameful quick fix of facebook.

I can't let December slip away without some mention of festive times, can I? Today we conquered gingerbread men, in more ways than one and, unlike last weekend's pre-fab gingerbread "village", it wasn't a total disaster.

Our chief inspiration came from Drew's current fascination with the gingerbread man story which his teacher read aloud and gave to each student as a Christmas gift.

We followed the recipe on the back of the book.



I set aside expectations. All of them.



Which really seemed to help us achieve overall goodwill.



For all men.



Except for poor Mr. Gingerbread Man.

Unpaid advertisement

I'm becoming a grown up. I'm making my own bread. Regularly! If four weeks in a row counts as regularly. Really, I'm getting into a groove and it hasn't been that bad. Usually I do the baking on Sunday, using Farmhouse White Bread recipe and we are set for at least a week with 3 loaves. (We consume lots of sandwiches around here)

No more frantic bread runs to the drugstore where the bread tastes like ground up cardboard.

This recipe really seems to work for me and I'm even able to sneak in a cup or two of wheat flour without anyone noticing.

The biggest key to my success though, has nothing at all to do with yeast amounts or rising times. It is a bread slicer I found that does not turn my loaves into a crooked, crumbly mess. I cannot recommend a good bread knife enough. I am actually able to cut straight, evenly sized pieces of bread. It's a lot more motivating to bake bread when you know you'll actually be able to use it.

DIY leather

I've been attempting fruit leather lately. After a couple batches my biggest problem seems to be spreading the pureed fruit evenly so that it dries at the same rate. Next time I may use two cookie sheets. Otherwise it is a pretty foolproof process and the end result is every bit as good as the store bought stuff, without any of the extra sugar and junk.






















Here is a photo (and instructions) that inspired me. And one other tutorial here I used as reference although there are about a million more to be found, I'm sure.

Also, do not use wax paper. It sticks. Next time I'm trying parchment paper or buying some silpat. Hot fruit on plastic wrap scares me.

That which we call spaghetti

I don't have any of the fancy attachments or gadgets to crank out homemade pasta but it's something I've always wanted to try. Inspired by reports of those who did it all by hand, and aided by this book, I finally took the plunge yesterday.

The dough is really quite simple-just a mix of eggs and flour although the consistency is a little tricky. I think my dough was a little too tough because it was difficult for me to roll it as thin as I wanted.


















After the dough sat for an hour it was just a matter of rolling it out and cutting. Something Ethan gladly helped me with. I knew it was probably going to be too thick in spite of our efforts to cut thin pieces.

















The book was a little vague about cooking times but I approximated based on pasta of a similar size. If there is such a thing.






















To be honest, it was disgusting. Really doughy and thick and almost inedible. But! I learned a valuable secret. If you call something spaghetti, my boys will consume it, love it and ask for seconds!






















Although at one point, Drew did say, "Something tastes funny." Oh yeah, probably the garlic bread, Drew.

If you can't take the heat...

You know your oven needs cleaning when the kitchen is so smoky your son tries to fashion a gas mask in order to eat his dinner. Another clue is when flames start shooting up from the surface of the oven.

Blueberries for yous

Food photography should be left to the professionals, in my opinion. They have some tricks up their magical sleeves. The rest of us can manage to make a tasty morsel look about as appealing as roadkill with our best attempts. Should I speak for myself?

Anyway, this isn't about the photograph really. More of a little story for a change. Lately, Ethan has developed an interest in geography which I'd like to think began with license plate hunting on our recent road trip. Whatever the cause, he is quick to devour maps and books about states and countries.

Last week he begged for a library trip and came home with arms full of these books. Shortly after, he came to me with a book about New Jersey and reported he had found a great recipe for me to try. Apparently, New Jersey's fruit is the blueberry.

Tonight I discovered I had exactly two cups of frozen blueberries in the freezer. It looked pretty simple and quick and it was. Really good too!

Blueberry Cobbler
Ingredients:
3 T. butter, melted
2 cups blueberries
1 cup flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup plus 2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 cup milk

Directions:
1.Preheat oven to 350.
2 Spread the melted butter over the bottom of a 9-inch glass pie plate. Cover the butter with the blueberries.
3. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, 1 cup of the sugar, and salt. Add the milk. When blended, pour the batter over the blueberries. Sprinkle the remaining 2 teaspoons sugar over the batter.
4. Bake 45 to 50 minutes, or until the top is nicely browned.



On the opposite page, we find this educational tidbit: When talking to more than one person at once, many people in New Jersey say "yous" instead of "you" or " you all". Strangely familiar.

It wasn't a banana week

Time to turn to an old standby for help.

It's what's for lunch

Our house smelled good today

Good things

My days are very rarely a picture of domestic bliss. We are tired and whiny, often angry and overwhelmed like the rest of the world. Just a disclaimer, which I'm sure most people knew anyway.

There are days though, I am able to find and focus on one or two moments that were really just about perfect. They are moments and they do pass but today there were several and today I needed them.

It's been a cool, mostly bright day. Odd for July, but a nice break from warm weather. I am loving this strange summer we've had with its low humidity and breaks from the heat. Perfect.

It seemed like a good day for some homemade bread, which we were out of anyway. The weekend phenomenon at our house: No bread, milk or cereal. Always happens. I found this recipe which was originally for a bread machine but it worked just fine by hand.















While the dough was rising, we got outside for a walk/ride to the neighborhood "park". Drew rode his bike all the way which was a first for him. He was thrilled with his accomplishment.






















We walked down the trail there looking for wildlife of any sort but didn't find much. We did find some blackberries though, which we brought home to enjoy with our bread.















I remembered that we had some heavy cream on hand from making ice-cream earlier this week (which, by the way, was a total disaster, ending in a trip to the dentist for me), which we used to make butter. Easy as pie. Put the cream in a jar and shake it. Or give it to your toddler who will shake it once and clasp it to himself like hidden treasure until you pry it from him.






















The smell of bread baking, the taste of bread with homemade butter. Can't get much better than that.


















































My day got even better at the mailbox when I found this much anticipated arrival. I haven't done much knitting lately and I have a project in mind. My fingers are itching.