Failing Christmas

The RL Christmas tree--a gift from SP

On Friday night, worn out from a week of frantic prep (hampered by houseguests and leftover exhaustion from finishing my job) and nowhere near ready for the big day, I told a friend over dinner that I had failed Christmas this year. As of December 23, I had just mailed my first batch of cards; not yet started to decorate my tree (or finished decorating my house); completed less than half of the baking I had planned to do; and not even tackled the enormous pile of mail-order boxes in my front hall, let alone wrapped anything.

And not only failing as a human being and all-around domestic goddess, but also as a blogger: over the course of the past week I managed to prepare/consume/share/give away the following without ever taking a picture:

- an entire batch of pizzelles (I know I promised a post about these; it will be slightly delayed)

- ditto cardamom snowballs (adapted from a recipe in this month’s Bon Appetit)

- a bacon-cheddar-peppadew cheese ball (adapted from Homesick Texan via Dinner with Julie)

- Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners in their entirety

- carefully assembled dessert trays for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners

And yet, last night, as DP and I sat flopped on the couch together, watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (me with one of my new cookbooks on my lap), I said to DP, “You know, in spite of all my angsting about what a crappy job I was doing at managing things this year, it turned out to be a really nice Christmas.”

“Yes, it was,” he agreed in his usual no-nonsense fashion. “So why don’t you write that down and remember it, so maybe you won’t be so hard on yourself next year.”

Done. And after that, all that’s left to do is to wish you all a peaceful and relaxing holiday season.


Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer.
Cheer to all Whos far and near.
Christmas Day is in our grasp, so long as we have hands to clasp.
Christmas Day will always be just as long as we have we.

- Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Wordless Wednesday

Holiday fail!

Tech fail

One night's tapas output--see below for a list of the week's experiments

I spent last week in Madrid for work, at my organization’s annual meeting. Since I work alone, I really look forward to this event as a rare opportunity to be physically in the same place as my coworkers, and to cram into five days the year’s worth of gossip, inside jokes, and goofing off that you just can’t replicate by yourself in a home office. Since part of my job is to be the organization’s social media point person (or empress, as I prefer to call myself), I also had plans to tweet, blog, and FB the heck out of the event to my fellow attendees and to anyone who hadn’t managed to come but wanted to follow along interactively.

Caving in

This is what caving in to the holiday-industrial complex looks like.

I’ve never had much use for Valentine’s Day; the whole idea of mandatory expressions of love and affection just annoys me. Plus it mainly seems to end up making people feel bad: single people feel bad about not being in a relationship, while people in relationships are made to feel that their tokens of esteem are deficient somehow—the wrong kind of (overpriced) dinner out, the insufficiently pricey/showy bouquet of flowers, box of chocolates, or shiny trinket.

Who needs the stress?

Lessons learned

Late last Friday night I made a large chocolate sheet cake for a graduation party we were hosting for DP’s students on Saturday afternoon. I used my mum’s chocolate cake recipe, and baked it (for the first time ever) in an 11” x 14” pan, because I thought that would be easier to slice and serve to a large group of people (and maybe even to write “Congratulations!” on if I got really ambitious).

I love that recipe: it only uses one bowl, and as always it came together really quickly and baked up beautifully. I put it on a rack on the counter to cool while I got on with some other party food prep.

PB fail

Since I already had one spectacular failure in my one and only attempt to make jam in a slow cooker, it seems only fitting that its companion in this illustrious category should be peanut butter.

I’m not sure what I did wrong, or if I even did anything wrong. As one of my everyday cooking challenges, I decided to try making my own peanut butter in my fancy new food processor (aka Archie). I looked up some recipes, all of which seemed perfectly straightforward: grind some cooked peanuts until they turn into peanut butter. Add seasonings as desired. Eat. I bought some dry-roasted peanuts (I figured that, if my first experiment was a success, then next time I could maybe try roasting the peanuts myself.) I put two cups in the food processor and turned it on.

Appliance fail

Despite the fact that I move a lot, I don’t really like being in transition. I know there are people who thrive on chaos but, despite all indicators to the contrary, I am not one of them. I like structure, routine, making lists, all those things. I like having a place for everything and knowing that everything is in its designated place. (Note that in a box, in a container, on a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean does *not* count as a designated place.) During my long, long stay in the serviced apartment, I daydreamed about the day when I would be puttering in my own kitchen, putting homemade stock in my own freezer, baking cakes in my own oven with my own pans. All my stuff would be unpacked, neatly arranged, easily accessible, and working smoothly in harmony with the array of gleaming appliances that would come with my house.

Notice how I neatly skipped over the part where I got myself situated, figured out where to put all the stuff, and learned how to use everything?

Challenge fail

Well, I really blew it on this month’s Cookbook Challenge: I didn’t even manage to make one recipe from the selected cookbook. I spent plenty of time drooling over the contents beforehand, but when it came down to where the skillet meets the stove (or whatever), I either didn’t have the skillet (or mostly any other piece of equipment I needed), or I didn’t have the motivation. Oh, and then I left town for the last week of the month.

Bad taste

*

Last week, some new friends of ours invited Miss B and me to a “Taste of” event being hosted by a neighboring city. We enthusiastically accepted; it was early enough in the evening so that Miss B would enjoy it, and I figured it would be a good opportunity for me to meet some of the local food types and find out what was happening around here. Visions of tasty samples and blog posts danced in my head.

We made a plan, and arrived at the venue just after the doors opened on Saturday evening. There was already a small line of people waiting to get in, which whetted my anticipation even more. It looked to be a popular event, the perfect way for a newcomer like me to get some real knowledge about the local scene, food and otherwise.

As we stood in line, chatting about nothing much, the woman in front turned to us. At first I thought she knew our friends, but then she held her ticket out to us.

Diamond shoes

We had dinner guests last night--my brother-in-law D. and his brood, Miss I., Miss R., and Mr. C. D. is an excellent cook, so I always want to be at the top of my game when I'm cooking and he's eating. Yesterday afternoon, I was there: I had a disk of pastry dough and a bag of cut-up apples sitting in the fridge, just waiting to be used. So I made an apple pie for dessert. I even cut out stars for the top crust, for an extra-fancy presentation, and baked it before I left to run a couple of errands. I thought everything was in the bag. I was feeling pretty cocky.

Then I got home late, our guests arrived late, and somehow dinner, instead of being on the table at 6:45 as planned, didn't get served until 7:25. And when I brought out the pie (warm from being reheated in the oven) and cut into it, I realized that it wasn't quite as cooked as it looked. The crust was a little gooey, the apples were a little crunchy. Still edible, but not exactly spectacular.

D. & Co. left around 8:30 to get the kids into bed; we put Miss B. to bed and cleaned up; and I, pouting, put the pie back in the oven. (I had decided that the culprit was the cookie sheet I had put underneath to catch any spilled juice, and it seems I was right--another 20 minutes in a hot oven without it and it was another dessert altogether.)

I, still sulking over my not-perfect dinner, cut another small piece and went into the living room, where DP was starting up the DVD player and checking the news. I, in my clean, safe, well-heated house, full of dinner and carrying a piece of warm pie and a glass of cold milk, glum over my dessert fail, walked in...to see the latest footage from Haiti.

Then I remembered that, if an underbaked apple pie was the worst thing that had happened to me today, I was one damn lucky woman.

Red Cross

Médicins sans frontières

Oxfam

Challenge outtakes

Just in case you’re thinking it’s all sunshine and flowers and effortless production and consumption of deliciousness 24/7 here at Casa Roving Lemon, I thought I’d share a couple of less-than-stellar moments during this past month’s Cookbook Challenge:

1. Zeppoli I was gunning to make it to five recipes this month for once, and the fifth one I had bookmarked was zeppoli—an Italian sweet treat made with fried dough. I read through the recipe, and thought, “Oh, that’s just bread dough. I’ll just use the bread dough I have in the refrigerator.” Completely ignoring that a) the recipe had a much higher ratio of yeast to flour than standard bread dough; and b) I’m always trying to achieve more of a country-bread, slow-rise, chewy tang with my bread dough. This second fact, in particular, gives you pretty much the opposite of what you’re looking for in zeppoli, as I discovered when I bit into one. They tasted pretty much like tiny, fried sourdough rolls. With powdered sugar on them. Not my finest effort. (Not that that stopped me from eating them all.)

2. Broccoli Note to self: if you are fortunate enough to have a child that happily eats her own body weight in broccoli when you produce it in the normal way (or, rather, the way that’s normal for you), don’t change things. Don’t suddenly roast the broccoli and present it to her like that. She will say things like, “Mummy! It has brown stuff on it!” and “Mummy! I don’t like this brown stuff!”. She will try to claw off the brown stuff. With her fingers. She will make faces and gag theatrically and try to scrape her tongue clean. No matter how much you like the broccoli (and I’m sure you will), believe me, this will interfere with your enjoyment of dinner.

3. Dining post hoc(kily) I’ve eaten cold cereal for dinner at least four times in the past month, usually after hockey. By the time I’ve finished training, schlepped all my kit home on the bus, and taken a shower (since the rink does not offer such sissy amenities as hot water), I’ve got no energy left to turn on the stove, even to heat up leftovers.

But, as you can see from the photo at the top (crappy as it is), we still make the effort. Those may be Deep-Fried Sugar-Frosted Mini Dinner Rolls, but, who cares, we’re still gonna decorate ‘em. With cachous! (That’s Australian for what we in the US call “those little silver balls you stick on cakes”.)

Kitchen perspective

When I started getting seriously interested in cooking, ten years ago or more, I remember my early encounters with the “authoritarian” style of cookbook writing. You know the type: when the author states that you must make the recipe using exactly these ingredients (preferably in season, locally sourced, and organic) and exactly this method, or else a hole will open up in the space-time continuum and all humanity will be doomed.

Okay, I might have exaggerated that last part a little bit. But you get my drift.

I remember reading these treatises and getting panicky—and embarrassed, if I had already made the dish in question and done some part of it “incorrectly.” As if the Kitchen Police were even now on their way to come and get me. (Apple crumble in summer?! To the dungeons!)

Recently I came across one of these opinionated tomes and, leafing through it, was slightly surprised to find myself not only not getting flustered, but mentally rolling my eyes at page after page of personal experience and opinion presented as kitchen dogma.

Either I’m getting more confident as I get older, or more impatient. Maybe both.

Because here’s the thing: life isn’t like that, and cooking certainly isn’t like that. Rigid rules and systems are all very well, but the fact is they only give the illusion of control. Reality, in the kitchen and out, is dictated by the amount of time, energy, money, and space that people have available to do the things they need and want to do. And sometimes, no matter how much you plan and prepare, things go wrong. You don’t know why. It doesn’t matter how much you have or how much you know. And you can’t do anything about it. You just have to roll with whatever sucker punch the universe has decided to give you.

And in the kitchen, what matters, in the end, is taking the trouble to make good, nutritious, tasty food—for ourselves and other people—and remembering how lucky we are to have the wherewithal to do so.

Reluctant baked egg puff
Adapted from The Best American Recipes 2002-2003
Aka my most recent kitchen fail. I’ve made this recipe numerous times; the other night I prepared and baked it as usual. I took it out after what I thought was enough time, and put a knife into the middle to test it. The knife came out clean (in three places!), so I left it out. When I tried to cut it five minutes later, a large puddle of uncooked egg oozed out, and back into the oven it went. In the end, it took almost an hour to cook. Why did this happen? Is it my crappy oven? The dish I cooked it in? Who knows? Even with years of cooking experience, sometimes things still happen that mystify me. And in the end, even though it was ready 25 minutes after everything else, it was still good.

¼ cup plus 2 Tbsp all-purpose/plain flour
1 tsp salt
¾ tsp baking powder
9 large eggs
3 Tbsp butter, melted
1½ cups cheddar cheese, grated
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup pecorino romano, grated
3 scallions, chopped
½ cup salami, chopped

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Butter a pie dish or similar. Measure first three ingredients into a small bowl; whisk to combine, then set aside.

Beat eggs in a large bowl until doubled in size (this will take 3-5 minutes, depending on your mixer). Add dry ingredients, butter, and cheeses and continue to mix until combined. Fold in the scallions and salami, then pour into baking dish.

Bake until golden brown on top and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean (make sure to double—or quintuple—check this). The recipe suggests 30-35 minutes, but it may take longer. Let stand for a few minutes before slicing, if you can.

Serves 6.


Dedicated to the memories of J. and M., who I never got the chance to meet.

Fail jam

I made jam in the slow cooker. I got about two pounds of strawberries on sale for five bucks, and bought a bunch of rhubarb (another five bucks) so I could make strawberry-rhubarb jam in the slow cooker. I was very excited.

I chopped everything up and mixed it up with about three cups of sugar. I put it in the slow cooker and then it looked like stawberry-rhubarb soup for a really long time. When it was time for me to go to bed, it was finally starting to cook down a little. So I put the slow cooker on a timer so it would cook for another couple of hours, and then I went to sleep.

I think I overcooked it.

The consistency is veering away from jam and towards fruit leather. And I didn’t even put any pectin in it.

Also? The sugar I used was unrefined, which combined with the overcooking gives the whole thing a kind of caramelly/smoky aftertaste which is suggestive of burned fruit, even though it didn’t actually burn because, you know, I made it in the slow cooker.

Also, see that jar? It used to be a pickle jar. Despite the fact that I scrubbed it, and boiled it, I’m still getting a faint whiff of pickle when I open the jar.

Not the most appetizing thing when you’re expecting to smell jam.

So, to recap: ten bucks worth of fruit + ten (?) hours of cooking + essence of pickle + the feel of leather + burned sugar aftertaste = a big jar of fail.

You can call that a recipe if you want, but I don’t recommend making it. If you’re that intrigued by it, come on over to my house and help me eat it.

Oh yeah, I’m gonna have to figure out a way to eat it. Haven’t I told you how much I hate wasting food?