Weekend schedules

Do you have a schedule for your weekend? Following on from last week’s post, I’ve been thinking more about time blocks and how useful they are - but also how important it is to not fill up all those blocks with chores. It’s just as important to set aside a few for fun things, or to do absolutely nothing. 

My mother had a tendency to fill her days with chores from morning until night, and to try to combat this environmental conditioning, my sisters and I have been encouraging one another to follow the practice laid down by one of our aunts for herself post-retirement - chores in the morning, fun in the afternoon. 

I can’t say that I’m fully succeeding at implementing this system for my weekends, especially as I regularly push the envelope by doing things like not eating lunch until 2pm. But I think it is making me more mindful about how I use my time. This includes paying attention to how long things actually take; I have a tendency not to notice that, and trying to estimate that more accurately ahead of time is helping me to better manage my own expectations of what’s feasible in a morning. And maybe also helping me to normalize that an hour or two on the couch with a book or a movie is a perfectly reasonable way to spend a weekend afternoon. Even if this weekend I instead gave chunks of my afternoons to an Instant Pot beef stew (very) loosely based on this recipe, and a longstanding family Valentine's Day tradition. It's all about progress, right?  

Circuit 53

This past week was pretty packed with meetings and deadlines, and so I didn’t have the time or the brain space to cook anything new or different. I only made one thing that I wouldn’t usually make in the middle of the week, and it is very old. (And it’s not the only one.) 

I’ve been making my own birthday cakes for more than 20 years now, since I first moved away from Boston. Before that, my mother made them, and the combination of yellow cake (or gold cake, as she called it), and chocolate frosting was the one I chose most often. It still is. I’ve had the occasional celebration cake or dessert produced or procured by someone else, but all I ever really want when my birthday rolls around is one of my mother’s cakes. Making it myself is as close as I can get. 

My personal new year starts a little bit later than everyone else’s. I haven’t set any major resolutions, intentions, or goals this year, as I have tended to do in the past. I’m just hoping that the good outweighs the bad in 2022, for all of us.

Exeunt 2021

...pursued by a bear? Actually a straightforward bear might make a welcome change from much of the fun-house tour, conducted at dizzying speed, that has characterized this year. I keep saying to people that it felt as though 2020 went on for about five years, and that 2021 has been more like five weeks. And now here it is December again, and time to crank up the holiday-cookie production line. (I'm still hoping that people will want homemade cookies this year; I scaled back considerably on numbers last year in recognition of the whole socially-distanced holiday vibe, so I guess we'll have to see how things go over the next couple of weeks.)

As I live in hope, I've started browsing my photo archive for the year to jog my memory of highlights, baking and otherwise. These Chocolate Sugar Cookies are easily my favorite recipe from Sarah Kieffer's 100 Cookies, and were well received both at home and in care packages sent across a wide swath of the continental US. Any cookie is a Christmas cookie if you make it at Christmastime, right?  

50 weeks

This weekend marks 50 weeks of quarantine life - just two weeks shy of a full year since we went into lockdown - and the final weekend of this longest shortest month. I had a look back through my photos to see what this month looks like for the archive:

Snow We had snowfall or wintry mix with accumulation on 11 out of 27 days this month - beautiful to look at, but messy and slippery enough to mess with my regular exercise and grocery routines. We had an abrupt change from snow on Monday to 60-degree weather on Tuesday and, as much as I love my hibernation, I think I’m officially ready for spring.

Handwork More time indoors has meant more time spent on crafty pursuits, and this month I finished another two projects: a crocheted scarf and a zippered pouch. I’m also pursuing my interest in visible mending, and did an intentional repair on a favorite souvenir tea towel. 

Cooking Possibly my proudest cooking moment of the month was creating a complete meal out of what looked like a pretty bare refrigerator. Stumped about what to make for dinner, and not wanting to make an impromptu supermarket run in another wintry mix episode, I stumbled across a recipe for Belgian Endive and Ham Gratin. I didn’t have any Belgian endive, but I did have a heap of leftover braised chard, so I rolled that (along with some leftover rice pilaf) into slices of ham, as proposed by the recipe, and made those the base of the recipe instead. As a bonus, I finally feel like I’ve mastered making a Mornay sauce.

Baking As usual, there was a lot of this - chocolate cupcakes, whoopie pies for Valentine’s Day, Smitten Kitchen’s French Breakfast Puffs for Sunday breakfast - and I also cracked open 100 Cookies and made a big batch of chocolate chip cookies to give away and send in care packages.

Speaking of care packages.... I’ve been participating in the Lasagna Love initiative, a volunteer movement to provide a hot meal to people in our communities who may be in need of a helping hand for one reason or another. Over the holiday weekend, I combined a Lasagna Love delivery with a new-baby meal delivery for one of DP’s students - my favorite kind of community effort!

Other distractions Most of my sisters and I have become obsessed with Spelling Bee, one of the New York Times’ daily puzzles - so much so that we had to set up a separate chat thread to avoid driving the one sister who isn’t playing around the bend. We swap hints, complain about ineligible words (what do you mean “chillin’” doesn’t count?), and cheer each other on to Genius level and sometimes, the coveted Queen Bee.

And last but not least, I can’t overlook the other, happier milestone that we’ve reached this weekend - two years since we brought our furry housemate home from the shelter. Originally dubbed Trinity when she first came home, she has since acquired a variety of nicknames, the most commonly used of which these days is Chubthulu. Here she is in her favorite spot, doing what she does best: improving quality of life for all just by hanging around.

Status update

New kitchen installation, Day 1.

Short version: our transition is ongoing.

Slightly longer version: we've been camped out in northern Virginia in a friend's basement for 5 weeks; tomorrow we shift to a short-stay apartment closer to our new house/construction site. We have now officially entered the intensive phase of renovation, and our household goods are expected to arrive in port from Australia shortly. Summer vacation 2.0 is entering its final phase for Miss B, with just over 2 weeks until school starts. DP is enjoying settling into his new job, and my working life has entered an interesting phase, of which more later - right now I'm mainly focused on juggling between work and contractor responsibilities, interspersed with occasional interactions with spouse and child.

My mantra of the moment: "It'll all get done somehow." And I'm not complaining - I knew what August would be like when I signed up for this.

One of the main reasons that makes it all worth it: being able to join my family's Cape vacation for the first time in ten years:

S'mores

Desserts: my mum's chocolate cake, with vanilla buttercream frosting (top);
Food52 Shortcut Pie with a gluten-free cookie crust filled with roasted peaches and raspberries (bottom)

Highlights included s'mores on the back patio and a mass birthday party for all the summer birthdays in my family (about half of the 15 people in attendance - I contributed the desserts). Other highlights, not pictured: the cousins' sleeping loft; Mexican train dominoes; loafing in rocking chairs on the porch; unscheduled time with a lot of people I've been missing for a long time.

Making lemonade

So my long (long looooooong) spell of waiting is over, and not in the way I had hoped - though a number of people in a position to understand it all better than I have just about convinced me that this outcome will be the best one in the long run. I think. In any case, that's really all I'm going to say about it, with apologies for being mysterious. Overall I'm relieved to have the waiting be over, but I've got feelings to process and next steps to ponder. As I do so, I'm continuing to work on practicing meticulous mindfulness - it, along with regular strenous gym workouts, has become a key mechanism for dealing with the 'anger' phase of the process around this drawn-out decision (to say nothing of  my feelings about current events in the wider world).

As I refocus on life here in Canberra, autumn is getting underway. The first of the new season apples are showing up at the markets, so to celebrate earlier in the week I made a personal-sized version of Dinner with Julie's Apple Pie Scones - I still used a whole apple, but it was small, and I halved the scone dough.
 

I got 3 good-sized scones out of it, and it significantly improved my week.

Since baked goods can improve most people's week, I also asked Miss B what baked good she was in the mood for, and she requested Dark Side cookies - "like the kind they would have to lure you to the Dark Side?" So I dug up this recipe from Nigella Express, and these super-chocolate bombs were just what the doctor ordered - or rather the frazzled new high schooler.

Yes - did I mention that Miss B is now in high school?! To be fair, it starts in Year 7 in Canberra, but still.

In other cooking experiments, I had a sudden hankering for san choy bow the other night, so I decided to whip some up. I didn't bother looking up a recipe, I just winged it (wung it?) with what I had on hand.

My version consists of chopped onions and mushrooms (and a little smoked salmon too) sauteed with oil/ginger/garlic/chili, with a sauce of 2 parts soy to 1 part fish sauce/sugar/lemon juice/sesame oil/sriracha, topped with chopped scallion/spring onion and slivered almonds. Wrap in lettuce leaves and have some rice alongside if you're a carb fiend like me. Proper san choy bow recipe here (turns out I wasn't that far off!).

And last but not least, here's some actual (as opposed to metaphorical) lemonade:

After my weekly farmers' market run this morning, I did some prep cooking - restocking my personal pantry for the week. On the right you see my coldbrew coffed brewing. On the left, my copy of Genius Recipes open to the One-Ingredient Whole Grain Crackers, which I made with a rice-quinoa blend I'm trying to use up. And in the middle, my re-gifted T2 tea infuser* brewing up a concoction of citrus zest and juice and mint and maple syrup to add a twist to my daily Green Tea Fizz.

*Sidebar story: the friend who re-gifted this to me handed it over with the declaration that she couldn't be bothered to use it, but that she was sure I'd figure out something interesting to do with it. I decided to take that as a compliment and a challenge; it took me a few months, but - voila!

Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

Eight weeks (part 1)

That posting-more-often thing doesn't seem to be working out too well, so here comes another mammoth update - so much that it's going to be in 2 parts!

I've developed the habit of baking a loaf of bread on the weekend just to have some around - not because we've got company coming or any other special reason, but just for us. This is what happens when I leave it lying around.

I took some of my first batch of homemade oat cereal and used it as the filling for some homemade chocolates to bring as a hosts' gift. I thought of it as a variation on the Nestle Crunch-type candy bar, but discovered I like the crispy but hefty (and a little bit salty) oats even better.

This is a chicken recipe involving sauteed onions, chicken breasts, and deglazing the pan at the end with balsamic vinegar. I made it in March and I can't remember where I found the original recipe - it was good, though!

Miss B and I have been trying to make time for creative endeavors - we found these alphabet stamps at Miss B's favorite shop.

My first attempt at a salade Niçoise, with a twist - I roasted the potatoes and green beans instead of boiling them, as in the traditional recipe. An excellent dinner salad for those of you where the weather is warming up.

DP's program has students from about two dozen countries besides Australia, and every year they host an International Day festival. I went this year for the first time - here's a picture of, as you can see, the Anglo-American corner.

Continuing the salade Niçoise theme, I made a pan bagnat - a Provençal sandwich - as my contribution to a potluck cards evening with friends. Given the activity, I thought sandwiches were the appropriate food choice, but as it turns out you need two hands to eat this.

And then all of a sudden it was Easter! The usual suspects: tarrale...

...pizza chiena...

...the brunch spread...

...and this year's new addition: an Easter-egg-themed table runner that I made myself out of tea towels.

I liked it so much I moved it onto the kitchen table after Easter was over, and left it there to enjoy for another week or so, along with some leftover goodies.

Speaking of leftover goodies, that brings us to the end of Easter and the end of March. Next up is part 2: the April recap!

Christmas 2015

I'm going to go on record here and say that Christmas 2015 is not going to make my lifetime Top 10 list of Christmases. What with the sinus infection beforehand, DP leaving on the 27th for a 10-day work trip that got rescheduled at the last minute, and the emergency dental work, it wasn't quite the relaxing family interlude I had been planning on all year. I rounded off the holiday week with having the one book I found in the library confiscated at the desk because someone else had reserved it, and ruining a batch of strawberry jam. So there was some fairly epic self-pity going on...at least until I had a conversation at the end of it that reminded me forcefully of how truly fortunate I am. And that there was some good stuff mixed in there too:

As usual, I made up goody bags for friends, neighbors, teachers, and DP's team. These ones include strawberry jam and chocolava cookies - Miss B requests these first every year when Christmas baking starts.

I finally broke out my mini-loaf pan to make some cranberry bread (like this but without the walnuts and with a dollop of maple syrup in place of some of the brown sugar).

Sugar cookies - for ease of preparation I made the dough in the food processor, formed into logs, rolled in colored sugar, and chilled overnight. Slice and bake in the morning and then all you have to do is assemble the bags. (As a side note, I finally found some cellophane goodie bags and I felt like they changed everything in terms of providing simple but elegant packaging. Highly recommended.)

Calabrian Christmas doughnuts - make the dough the night of the 23rd (a basic yeast dough, almost 1:1 flour and water with a teaspoon of yeast and a half-teaspoon of salt for every pound/half kilo); on the morning of Christmas Eve, fry in olive oil (the tradition is to try to make rings, but I usually just give up and fry blobs) and serve up hot with honey. I gave DP a box of these hot out of the frying pan to share with his Calabrian barbers - always nice to spread Christmas cheer to people you know will appreciate it!

Only the second year and it's already a tradition - the bûche de Noël. I didn't love the way the cake came out this year (I was rushing and I think I used the wrong recipe) but no one else seemed to care. Extremely decadent but in my opinion not as difficult as it looks - you can cover up your mistakes with chocolate buttercream icing or powdered sugar and it just looks more rustic and festive.

I didn't make this, but I have to share it because I thought it was so flawlessly beautiful and minimalist. It's a traditional Christmas fruitcake, made by one of DP's admin team. Since none of us are big Christmas cake fans (and neither were our two Christmas lunch guests), I left it pristine and brought it to my friend L's Boxing Day lunch to share, where it was devoured and raved over by a crowd - the proper fate for a lovingly made Christmas cake, I feel.

My lovely sisters always send care packages of goodies from the US - here's this year's haul from one of them. Note the Moscow mule mugs - specially designed just for my new favorite cocktail.

And of course, it wouldn't be Christmas without cookbooks - although when this arrived, I did wonder if it was some kind of cosmic sign that it was time to stop (despite the fact that I picked it out). Either that or living in the Midwest made more of an impression than I realized.

And that pretty much wraps up 2015 and kicks off 2016 - planning for which is under way, fuelled by coffee. Hope it is good to us all.

Strategic cooking

A lovely place for a hike, except for the part where I don't really like to hike

The first half of June seemed to involve an epic amount of cooking (unaccompanied by any photo-taking or blog-posting, alas - hence the entirely gratuitous scenery shot of a recent trip to Blue Moutains National Park). During that two-week stretch I had close to two dozen people over for meals, in varying amounts and combinations, all associated with DP's programme in one way or another (ie, mostly - but not all - teapot people). Enough of these events were back-to-back that I had the opportunity to experiment with re-purposing leftovers strategic cooking in a way that I was comfortable with, rather than starting from zero every time.

Here are a few of the hacks I came up with, mostly to do with starters and desserts - I think because I'm used to cooking a main meal most nights anyways, it's the frills that drive me around the bend.

Starters
This is not rocket science, but worth noting - a sturdy dip such as either of these will hold well for a couple of days. Maybe freshen the second batch with a squeeze of lemon or a slug of olive oil before serving?

• Basil-cashew-parmesan dip (I made a big batch of this, divided it, and served it two nights running to non-overlapping groups of guests)
• Garlicky sun-dried tomato spread (ditto; the second use was part of a bigger starter spread for a large group)

Desserts

• Chocolate ganache (I made a big batch of this; the first night I drizzled it over brown sugar pound cake and vanilla ice cream; by the second night it had firmed up in the fridge and I used it to fill a batch of Essential Cookie Sandwiches for a simple dessert for a non-teapot-person visitor.)
• Flourless chocolate cake (I served this in slices with whipped cream the first night, then in rounds, topped with roasted pears and maple whipped cream (an homage to the flavors of poires belle Helene) the second night)
• Caramel apple upside down cake (again - first night in slices with cream (ice? whipped? maybe a choice?), second day in hefty chunks in muffin cases as part of a lunch dessert spread)

It's probably worth noting that both the chocolate and the apple cakes were just as delicious the second day and not at all dried out or otherwise deterioriated.

Extras
In the event that you make a very large batch of nice homemade rolls one night and happen to have a lot of leftovers, they make excellent garlic rolls to accompany the next night's main course (particularly if it's something Italian, which it usually is in my house). Simply cut nearly all the way through each roll in an X-shape, then drizzle generously with butter that has been melted and combined with lots of chopped garlic. Wrap tightly in aluminum foil and re-heat for 15-20 minutes.

I also tried out some new stuff, which I'll write up as soon as I make them again and take some pictures of them. Hightlights to come include an entirely GF meal, something Miss B refers to as "flat tasty chicken", and my new favorite dessert.

Visitors galore

Despite being the national capital of Australia, Canberra is a little off the beaten path. It’s unusual that we get visitors passing through because they’re here for a conference or are on their way to somewhere else, and even less likely that they come because of a burning desire to visit the city itself. (The very idea would make most Australians snort with derisive laughter.) Since DP and I aren’t even Australian to start with, family members or old friends make only semi-occasional appearances. And most of the colleagues with whom I work most closely are, geographically speaking, a very long way away.

All of that is to say that I am used to feeling far away from a lot of the key people in my life a lot of the time. Which made this past week feel like even more of an anomaly, when I was juggling my regular schedule to accommodate four sets of visitors to Canberra in the same five-day period – three of them from overseas. Four! To be fair, none of them were here to see me specifically, or staying with us, which made the pressure less than it could have been; but I did host dinners on two successive nights (and school nights, at that!). I also tentatively volunteered to host a third night – not, as you might think, because I’m a) a masochist or b) insane, but because I thought a restaurant outing with six kids ranging in age from 1-10 didn’t sound fun for anyone – but luckily another family stepped up and did the honors for a Friday-night barbeque. I was so happy to have a social engagement that I wasn’t hosting that I brought a jug of sangria and whipped up this cake.

smitten kitchen’s ‘I want chocolate cake’ cake

copied slavishly (and doubled) from smitten kitchen, right down to the sprinkles
This is a one-bowl recipe; just remember to scrape the sides of the bowl down between each step. (You can even wash the bowl once the cake batter is in the oven and use it again to make the frosting!)

cake

12 Tbsp/170 g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups/290 g firmly packed brown sugar

4 Tbsp/50 g granulated sugar (I used raw sugar)

2 large eggs

2 large egg yolks

1 1/2 cups/350 ml buttermilk (I subbed plain Greek yogurt thinned with whole milk)

2 tsp/5 ml vanilla extract

1 cup/82 g Dutch cocoa powder

2 cups/250 g all-purpose/plain flour

1/2 tsp/3 g baking soda

1 tsp/5 g baking powder

1 tsp/5 g table or fine sea salt

frosting

4 oz/110 g unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled (I used Lindt 95% dark chocolate as the closest replacement – I can’t find unsweetened chocolate in Australia)

3 cups/360 g powdered sugar (sifted if lumpy)

1 cup/8 oz/230 g unsalted butter, at room temperature

pinch of fine sea salt (optional)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 Tbsp cream or whole milk

to make cake

Heat oven to 350F/180C. Line a 9- x 13-inch (22x33 cm?) cake pan with parchment paper, then butter or spray the parchment and pan.

Beat butter and sugars until fluffy in a large bowl. Add the eggs, the yolks, and the vanilla, and beat again until combined. Add the buttermilk and mix again.

Sift flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the batter and stir on low until just combined; scrape down bowl (preferably with a rubber spatula) a final time and give the batter a final stir.

Scrape/pour batter into prepared pan and smoothe flat. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool for 5 to 10 minutes in cake pan on cooling rack, then flip out onto rack or serving plate to finish cooling before frosting.

to make frosting

Place all frosting ingredients except cream/milk in a large bowl, then beat with a hand mixer until combined and fluffy. Add cream as necessary to achieve desired texture and fluffiness – you may not need all of it.

Scoop frosting onto the cooled chocolate cake and spread to cover evenly. Make swirls as tools and capabilities permit. Finish with rainbow sprinkles in obedience to Deb Perelman’s baking authority.