What to do until the repairman comes

The Roman Spelt Bread

I didn't want to be way at the other end of the house in the office area, which is a wreck, while waiting for the repairman to arrive and do his magic, so I thought I'd find a way to use up that spelt flour I'd bought to make the Roman loaves. I liked the Roman bread. It was great with homemade "minner cheese," but I was the only one. So I had tried using mixed with white flour like you would with whole wheat it in a regular loaf of bread. Something about the taste of that experimental loaf made me think it would make good cinnamon toast.

Then I got the idea to make a cinnamon bread with it. I had an old recipe from back in the late 60s when I first started my bread making. This is a transcription from my childish scrawl.

Danish Cinnamon Bread (sorry, no provenance)

5 - 5 1/2 cups flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 t salt

1 pkg active dry yeast

1 1/4 cups milk

1/4 cup margarine

2 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

2 t cinnamon (or more + 1 T br. sugar)

In large bowl mix 1 3/4 cups flour, sugar, salt, & yeast. Combine milk and margarine in saucepan, and warm. Gradually add to dry ingredients and beat for 2 min. at med. speed scraping bowl occasionally. Add eggs and 1/2 cup flour, or enough to make a thick batter. Beat at high speed for 2 min. Add 2 - 2 3/4 cup flour, enough to make a soft dough. Turn onto lightly floured board, knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 mins. Place in greased bowl, turn greased side up. Cover, let rise in warm place for about one hour. Combine sugar and cinnamon. Punch dough down, turn onto lightly flour[sic] board, cut in half. Roll each half into 12"x8" rectangle. Brush lightly with melted margarine and sprinkle with half of cinnamon sugar (be sure to get it to long edges). Roll up jelly roll fashion, working from short side. Pinch edges and ends. Tuck ends under, and place seam side down in greased 8 1/2"x4 1/2"x 2 1/2" loaf pan. Cover, let rise until double, about 1 hr. Bake in 350 deg oven for 30 min until golden and top sounds hollow when tapped.  Remove immediately from pan, let cool on wire racks.

Well, no way I was making two experimental loaves, so this is what I wrote down to cut it in half:

3 c fl                        1 c

2 T sugar

1/2 t salt

yeast

heat, add to above [with only one cup of flour], beat

1/2+ c milk

2 T butter [I use butter now]

add rest of flour, knead, rise.

1/4 c sugar + 1 t brown sugar [Mistakenly used 1 T]

1 t cinnamon

I started with a cup of flour that was half all-purpose and half spelt. I substituted another half cup of spelt in the remaining flour. At this rate it will take ages to use up the spelt. Did you notice I left out the egg? I didn't. I had started the kneading process (with the dough hook, not by hand, that's for sure) when I remembered. I worked it in with the dough hook. It was fine. 

For years I under-kneaded bread dough. Now I knead the heck out of it. I run the mixer for 10 minutes and then give it some hand kneading while it's out of the bowl so I can put the oil in.

By the way, washing the bowl before oiling is a waste of time and water. Ditto using another bowl. 

I'm also careful these days to make sure the liquid is 110 degrees. I buy yeast by the pound (and keep it in the freezer) and the package says proofing is not necessary. They're right. Sometimes, like today, it needs a little extra time for rising, but then I usually only give it a half an hour. It had a full hour first rise and 40 minutes for the second. 

I bake a lot of bread. I just enjoy the process as well as the eating. And I finally invested in one of those bamboo bread slicer guides. Once the loaf is absolutely room temp ... I let my husband slice it. Then it gets bagged and frozen if it's going to be used any time soon. If it's for eating farther in the future, it gets wrapped in freezer paper and bagged before going in Phil*, our big freezer chest. I write the kind of bread on the freezer paper. It's handy for that. I used to use foil, but I inherited two rolls of freezer paper (as well as a rather old bottle of J&B scotch) from my parents' collection. Now I love freezer paper (but not scotch). 

About the slicer, it has three different sizes of slice and it took a while to figure out how to use it. You have to move the bread to use the slice size you want. If you just stick the loaf in and slice away, you end up with a loaf with three sizes of slice, which is close to what you had before you bought the thing except maybe you had a dozen different size of slice.

* I don't normally name appliances and cars, but when I said I'd bought a freezer chest a friend asked me what I was going to name it. "Philip," I responded, almost without thinking, "Philip the freezer." Say it out loud. And Phil is Phull.

Pad Thai - mmmm, Ketchup!

Pad Thai

                  

From Kamolmal's Thai Home Cooking

Soak 20 - 25 minutes in enough warm water to cover them, then drain           

½ lb dried rice noodles 1/8” wide

                             

1/2 lb shrimp (peeled and de-veined), chicken, or pork or a combination meat should be cut 1/8 thick by 1 - 2" long

 

Mix: 

1/4 c fish sauce

1/4 c + 2 T granulated sugar

1/4 c + 2 T white vinegar

1 t paprika or 1 T tomato paste or 1 T ketchup*

 

4 scallions, sliced diagonally into pieces 1 1/2" long by 1/4" thick

 

1/2 c vegetable oil

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 eggs

 

-

Heat a wok, add oil, stir fry garlic until light golden.  Add meat and stir fry until done (shrimp pink, other meat not pink).

Add noodles and toss.  Add fish sauce mixture and bring to boil quickly.  Fold noodles carefully to coat them.  Push noodles to one side and break an egg into the wok (may need a little more oil).  Cover with noodles.  Do the same on the other side.  When the eggs are done, fold them into the noodles and meat.

Add sprouts and scallions and cook 2 more minutes.  Garnish with chilies, peanuts, lime wedges (to be squeezed on by individual eater).

 

When I was in Toronto, I went to a brilliant Thai restaurant that served me a Pad Thai that was a work of art as well as delicious.  And their Thai iced tea was incredible.  The Pad Thai had the peanuts in one corner of the plate (if a round plate even has corners), more scallions in another, and strips of carrot in a third.  The whole thing was garnished with a shrimp sitting tail up in the center.  It was fantastic.  You could add as much of the peanut as you wanted, as if I would short myself in that department.  These people had presentation down pat.

 

*For years I used paprika and then one day I had a Pad Thai at a local restaurant (now defunct) and realized that they were using ketchup.  What the hell, I thought.  If they can use ketchup, so can I.

Adventures in Spicy Basil

Fresh basil added for artistic verisimilitude.

This is a work in progress. One of our favorite dishes at the local Thai is the Basil Duck and while there is no chance of me frying up duck breast, I can at least try the sauce, so I found a basic recipe here and added vegetables. Other than garlic, shallots, and a serrano chile - oh, and basil - there's no veg in the recipe. Also, I felt the ratio of soy sauce to fish and oyster sauce was not quite right, so I've cut back. And I eliminated the chicken broth altogether and doubled the sauce because the chicken and veg create enough juice on their own and all the veg requires more sauce. So here's what I did:

Mix:          2 Tb oyster sauce
                  1 1/2 Tb fish sauce
                  1 Tb soy sauce
                  2 tsp white sugar
                  2 tsp brown sugar
                  2 Tb Huy Fong chili garlic sauce (or a minced serrano below)

Prepare:    1/4 cup sliced shallots
                  4 cloves garlic, minced
                  (optional minced serrano chile in lieu of chili garlic sauce)

Chop:       1/4 of a head of cabbage
                 1 bell pepper (red is prettier)

Steam      1/4 - 1/2 cup string beans (I used frozen beans and broccoli)
lightly:     1 cup broccoli florets
                 and the cabbage

                  1 cup thinly sliced basil leaves

                  1 chicken breast (a half, in other words), chopped, sliced, however you like.

                  Minimal amount of oil for frying.

                  1 cup brown jasmine rice, cooked. Brown rice needs to be soaked for 20 minutes, drained, and then cooked in 1 1/4 cups water or less. Or use whatever rice you want. White rice is a waste of calories.

Fry chicken in 2 T oil on high heat until pink disappears. Time will depend on size of chunks, 2 - 3 minutes.
Add shallots and garlic (and serrano if you are using that instead of chili garlic sauce) and cook 2 - 3 minutes.
Add 1 T of the sauce mixture and cook one more minute.
Add the rest of the sauce and the vegetables. Toss and cook 1 - 2 more minutes.
Remove from heat and add basil leaves - toss them around.
Serve over rice.

Mincemeat

Or, How Not To Poison Your Friends

First you have to find suet. I don't want to go over what I went through last year trying to find suet at a grocery store that had it the year before. Almost had an aneurysm. I suppose one could use butter, but where's the fun in that?

I have used the following recipe from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook successfully so far. It makes twice what I could can at one time, so I would start with halving it. 

 The Fannie Farmer Mincemeat recipe:

Makes 20 pints/10 quarts – unless you do the math to halve or quarter it.

In a large pot, cook slowly until sugar and citron melt:

4 lbs chopped lean beef
2 lbs chopped beef suet
3 lbs dark brown sugar
2 cups molasses
2 quarts cider
3 lbs dried currants
4 lbs seeded raisins
½ lb chopped citron

Add and cook until tender:

3 lbs apples – peeled, cored, sliced

Add and cook 15 minutes more, stirring frequently:

1 quart brandy
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon mace
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon allspice
2 teaspoons salt

Spoon into clean, hot jars leaving 1” headspace. Close the jars and process at 10 lbs pressure for 20 minutes. The book claims it will store indefinitely like this (and it will flavor through more with a bit of time) but I see online that 20 minutes is inadequate and although I’ve not yet given anyone botulism, canning meat or other low-acid foods takes 90 minutes. Check with an expert before doing any canning.

The We Ate All the Pies mince tarts

Now for the tarts. I got this recipe from the Standard Issue website, which is no longer. It's in Brit, so you'll have to convert. I have a kitchen scale, so that's no problem. If you're on the internet, which you must be to be reading this, you can find a site that will convert the temperature. I have that somewhere, but not on me right now.

I use muffin tins, which are larger than the ones described here, so the recipe only makes 12 (2 sets of tins) and uses less than a quart of the mincemeat, so there will be some left over. The tart pastry is very delicate, so take care in decanting the little pies.

225g cold butter diced

350g plain flour

100g golden caster sugar (or regular sugar)

280g mincemeat

salt

1 small egg (I don't bother with this or the icing sugar)

icing sugar, to dust

1.     To make the pastry, rub 225g cold, diced butter into 350g plain flour, then mix in 100g golden caster sugar and a pinch of salt. Combine the pastry into a ball – don’t add liquid – and knead it briefly. The dough will be fairly firm, like shortbread dough. You can use the dough immediately, or chill for later.

2.     Preheat the oven to 200C/gas 6/fan 180C. Line 18 holes of two 12-hole patty tins, by pressing small walnut-sized balls of pastry into each hole. Spoon 280g mincemeat into the pies.

3.     Take slightly smaller balls of pastry than before and pat them out between your hands to make round lids, big enough to cover the pies. Top the pies with their lids, pressing the edges gently together to seal – you don’t need to seal them with milk or egg as they will stick on their own. (The pies may now be frozen for up to 1 month).

4.     Beat 1 small egg and brush the tops of the pies. Bake for 20 minutes until golden. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack. To serve, lightly dust with icing sugar. They will keep for 3 to 4 days in an airtight container.

The Christmas Bread

 This is a simplified version of a recipe for a coffee cake that can thence be converted to the Christmas bread. The original recipe (possible from Southern Living) was a bit complicated, with the "instead" and "addition of" stuff. The original also called for "shortening" but, for heavenssake use butter because we know what's in butter, don't we? 

Norwegian Christmas Bread


1 1/2 c milk, scalded 
1 1/4 t salt 

1 c sugar

1 package of yeast

6 c sifted flour (will probably need more)

1/4 t allspice

1/4 t mace

1 t crushed cardamom

 3/4 c butter,melted

3 eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 c of seedless raisins

3/4 c diced citron

To the hot milk add salt and 2 T of the sugar.   

When lukewarm, add the yeast, 3 c of the flour, and the spices.  Mix well and set covered in a warm place to rise to double its bulk.   

Add remaining sugar, the shortening, eggs, raisins and citron.  Add the flour, mixing to a soft but somehow not sticky dough.  Knead and place covered in a greased bowl to rise to double its bulk.  Shape into loaves and place in greased pans.  Again let rise to double its bulk. 

Bake at 350 degrees about 50 minutes.  Makes two loaves.

Idea I Had After Seeing A Book Title

First Woman, Detective

Eve called her family in for dinner, but only Adam and Cain showed up. “Where’s Abel?” she asked. Adam and Cain looked at each other. “I don’t know,” said Cain. “He was with his sheep last I saw,” said Adam.

Eve went looking for Abel. She saw the crows circling over the field and went to look. There was Abel, face down, his blood drying in the sun. Near his body was a rock with blood and hair on it. She leaned over to look at it and then at her son’s head. She touched him and he felt cold. He was not asleep. Abel is dead, she thought, this is the first one. We will die, just like the Lord said.

She walked slowly back home. “Abel is dead. His head is dented by a stone. Someone has killed him.” She looked at her husband and son. “Did you kill Abel, Adam?” Adam looked stunned. “No!” he said, “why should I?” Eve turned to Cain, “Did you kill Abel, Cain?” Cain licked his lips and then burst out, “Why do you accuse me, Mom?” “I’m only asking, Cain,” said Eve patiently. “Why do you take Dad’s word for it?” he challenged. “Just answer the question, my son,” she said. “You always liked him best!” Cain accused. “Did you kill him?” Cain stared for a moment and then looked away. 

“Is this about the offerings to the Lord again?” asked Eve. “He never accepts my offerings!” cried Cain. “It’s always lamb, lamb, lamb!” Adam put his hand on Cain’s shoulder, but he shook it off. “Of course he accepts your offering,” he said. “Not with favor,” sneered Cain. “How can you tell?” asked Adam, who hadn’t bothered to offer anything since leaving the Garden.

“We’re getting off the point,” said Eve. “Someone has killed Abel and there are only three of us. I didn’t do it. Adam says he didn’t do it. Cain, did you kill your brother?” Cain lowered his head. “Yes, Mom. I lured him to the field and struck him down. I did it in anger.” Adam rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy – we’re in trouble now.”  “Why?” asked Cain. “There’s no one to tell.” “The Lord already knows!” exclaimed Adam. “He knows everything! But first He’ll pretend He doesn’t and will ask you and what are you going to say?”

“Look,” said Cain, “if we all just keep calm and say nothing, no one will find out and no one will get hurt.” He dragged his toe in the dust. “It’s not like there is anyone else.”

“Dinner’s getting cold,” said Eve. “We’ll discuss this later, young man.”

“Why am I always the one getting in trouble?” grumbled Cain.

Eve was sad, but at the same time she was oddly satisfied. I have solved a mystery, she thought. And she wished there were more.

“Who’s watching the sheep?” asked Adam.

“Oh, shit,” said Eve.

Where Did That Watch Come From?

This has annoyed me for ages.
If there is a watch, there must be a watchmaker. Yeah, okay. Therefore, if there is life on planet Earth ...
No, no. Let me stop you there. You skipped something.
Where did the watchmaker learn to make the watch? Where did she get the parts? Did she imagine it all by herself? How did she know time should be divided up the way the watch divides it?
Do people really think that inventions spring fully-formed from the forehead of some really smart person (or a god)? Everything we have, that we make, is based on technology that has come before. Everything we make has evolved. And it took a long, long time to get from one idea (Time - Hey, when's the best time to plant some crops?) to another (Ooooo, digital watch!), but often the latter stages start coming fast and furious. Sometimes technology gets stuck in a rut for a while until someone figures out some nuance to get it going again. [Cold fusion? Helloooo.]
But the fact remains that a watch developed out of hundreds, maybe even thousands of years of cutting time into pieces. And one of the prerequisites was the need for cutting time into pieces.
Let there be light! There was Dawn with her rosy fingers, noon when the sun was at its apex, and tobacco-stained Dusk. As the seasons changed, daytime and nighttime would duke it out and become longer for one and shorter for the other and then go back. The hours of the day were not uniform throughout the year. What good was a timepiece that divided the day into regular intervals? Who would care? Where was the need? (Apparently, there was a need to limit politicians from talking too long, but a water clock worked for that.)
What sort of technology goes into a watch? Let's imagine one of those cool. old-fashioned fob watches. Very basic. You wind it up, and it ticks. First of all, it's made of metal. You need to be able to extract metal from ore and shape it. Oh, wait. You need fire first. You need to control that fire. It probably needs to get pretty darn hot to melt metal. Well, we're at the Bronze Age now. No problem. Some folks worked that out for us.
What about that winding? Someone has to invent a spring. Alternatively, someone has to discover the properties of the pendulum. What about gears? Where did that idea even come from? Someone has to find a way to make all this much smaller, more accurate, and also attractive.
Thousands contributed to the making of a watch.
In 1972 I bought a watch in Switzerland, because that's what you did. And now I don't even wear one. I have a phone that is my watch, my camera, and a total time-sucker.  The watch has evolved right before my very eyes.
So, just because I didn't see life on this planet evolve and can't explain exactly how it happened, doesn't mean life didn't evolve. It took an amount of time and slow change that I would have difficulty fathoming because it is just so vast. At the same time (haha), the technology of a simple watch is something I could not replicate. I couldn't even begin to know how to smelt ore. I leave that up to the experts. And I leave all the steps up to the experts as it seems the human race has a hive mind with everyone running around being expert in their own thing and contributing to society as a whole. Sort of the way every part of our body performs a different job and shares the results to make us live.
I can see the parallels. Or do I mean paradigm? Let me check my phone. Siri might know.

The Old Lady in the Mirror

Yesterday I caught sight of myself in the mirror at work. It was accidental. I have not quite perfected my mother’s trick of just looking at the hair, or whatever it was she wanted to check, and ignoring the wrinkles and wattle. The gestalt hit me. I’ve gotten old. For a brief handful of seconds I caught myself thinking, What have I done with my life? Why did I put off living?

Then I suddenly remembered that I did not put off living. I put off settling down. What needs to happen is to go over my early life and remember that I did what I damn well pleased for over 20 years. I am not waiting to retire so I can do things. I’ve done them, begad.

After college, I worked at low paying jobs and played around with theatre. I was in a musical with Garry Moore. My then boyfriend (sort of affectionately known as The Wicked Step-Ex-Boyfriend) had talked about moving in together and I moved 800 miles away leaving instructions with my parents to not divulge my whereabouts. We are both much happier. He has his home and his partner and I have mine. Our years together (on and off or at a distance) were filled with adventure, if not happiness.

I moved to Manhattan to break into theatre. First, I freaked out and went to Cambridge, MA for a while, staying in someone’s dorm room. A friend found a foothold in Manhattan and I joined him, where I went to auditions, hung out in piano bars, did odd jobs in corporate libraries, advertising companies, and at HBO. At HBO I ended up in an office overlooking Bryant Park and the NY Public Library. I watched the lights come on the Empire State Building (which I tended to call the Statue of Liberty because I’m easily confused by monuments) each night from my office window. I worked for a literary agent and for some famous authors.

Eventually I moved on to Boston, where I did six shows in two years as opposed to no shows in three in Manhattan. I worked as a paralegal and took classes in cartooning, tapdance, cooking, and ancient Greek. I might still be there if I hadn’t fallen and broken my kneecap. Then again, someone had to go back south and look after our parents, or as I called them My Parents and my sister called them The Parents. I started back into theatre and slowly wound down into a full-time permanent job with a house of my own, thinking I had the rest of my life all worked out. All that slipped away when I found someone that actually wanted to marry me. And after I got over bursting into tears every time I heard the “M” word, I finally settled down.

None of the above really exposes the warp and woof of what went on: getting so drunk that I lost track of how I got from one end of Manhattan to the other, parading as a female impersonator on Christopher Street, meeting other actors with interesting abilities such as silverware impersonations (loved the shrimp fork!), having my glasses broken during a fight on the Boston T, trying to train a cat to be tossed in the air for a show (didn’t work out so he was just carried on stage briefly), portraying the Token Tapdancing Lesbian in a gay musical only to have my roommate find out about it later … All good fun.

But settling down has not, really, stopped me from doing whatever I damn well please. It just seems that with age, what I damn well please involves more napping. And jigsaw puzzles online.