bibliomom

I love pecan pie. And as much as I hated living in the South as a child, deliciousness like this makes me, well, not think of it fondly, but at least makes me wish people in the Northwest liked to cook a little more.

However, pecan pie has always had one major problem, especially up here in the Northwest: it’s usually way too stinking sweet. And since Karo syrup’s already on my Big Bad List of Manufactured Foods to be Avoided at All Costs, that makes it doubly unwelcome.

All of which means as much as I love pecan pie, I almost never make it.

So, when I ran across a recipe for “Old-Fashioned Pecan Pie” in my last edition of Cook’s Country, I was skeptical, but interested. Surprisingly, the recipe really was trying to re-create an “old-fashioned” pecan pie, where old-fashioned means “before Karo syrup”.

Fascinating.

Apparently the pies were originally made with molasses, maple, cane or sorghum syrup, some of which the tester loved, but deemed to difficult to obtain. (What the heck? Doesn’t everyone have a can of Cane River in their pantry? Oh, wait – that’s just my family.) Anyway, they ended up using a combination of maple syrup, molasses and brown sugar in their pie.

How is it? I have *no* idea. School just started, Monkey’s been going in a for battery of neuro-psych tests and I’m swamped. So, I’m sending it out to you my sisters, to see who makes the famed pie first. And let me know if it’s worth making, ‘k? Because the only thing I’d like more than a big old piece of pecan pie, is a recipe worth making.

Old-Fashioned Pecan Pie

Regular or mild molasses tastes best in this pie. Use your favorite pie dough or go to CooksCountry.com for our Single Crust Pie Dough recipe.

1 cup maple syrup

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon molasses

4 tablespoons, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups pecans, toasted and chopped

1 (9-inch) unbaked pie shell (see note), chilled in pie plate for 30 minutes

1. Make Filling Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 450 degrees. Heat syrup, sugar, cream and molasses in saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool 5 minutes. Whisk butter and salt into syrup mixture until combined. Whisk in egg yolks until incorporated.

2. Bake Pie Scatter pecans in pie shell. Carefully pour filling over. Place pie in hot oven and immediately reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees. Bake until filling is set and center jiggles slightly when pie is gently shaken, 45 to 60 minutes. Cool pie on rack for 1 hour, then refrigerate until set, about 3 hours and up to 1 day. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Fall’s here (for the second or third round) and the fruit stands are flush with new crop apples. Know what that means? Caramel apple time!

Even since I first saw those giant caramel apples in the gourmet food magazines, I realized there was almost no limit to the stuff you can stick on the side of an apple.

My current favorite (and easy) caramel recipe is from honey.com:

Caramel Honey Apples

1 cup packed brown sugar

½ cup butter or margarine

½ cup honey

¼ cup heavy cream

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

⅓ cup chopped nuts

6 small apples with sticks

Combine all ingredients except apples and nuts in 2-quart saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat to 265°F; stir constantly. Remove from heat. Cool 5 minutes.

Holding apple by stick, roll in hot honey mixture to coat; roll bottom of apple in nuts if desired. Place on waxed paper squares to cool. Repeat with remaining apples.

Now it won’t make as many giant apples, but it’s not a bad amount of caramel. The cinnamon is best for just plain caramel – I leave it out when I roll my apples into toasted, chopped TJ’s pecans and my favorite Callebaut chocolate chips. You can also do the Rocky Road style by adding mini-marshmallows, or pretty much anything else you can think of – white chocolate, sprinkles, chopped up toffee bars, etc. Just remember that the caramel is hot, and the stuff you stick on it might melt a bit – I have to let the ones with chocolate on them sit for quite a while until the chocolate firms back up.

Hey – it’s fairly quick and easy, the kids love them and I get my gourmet apples for way less than $25 a piece.

Oh – and by the way – though the recipe says “wax paper squares”, I think they’re smoking something. Putting hot caramel anything onto waxed paper tends to lead to a permanent situation – and caramel flavored wax paper tastes nasty. Ask me how I know. Anyway, use parchment paper or a silpat – you’ll be much happier.

Dulce de Leche Smoothie

2 cups milk

2/3 cup Dulce de Leche

1 medium rip banana

2 cups ice

Blend until smooth; serve immediately.

Now, this is what I get for having a can of La Lachera Dulce de Leche kicking around my kitchen in the first place. Really, how am I supposed to lose weight with that darn La Lachera girl smirking at me? Being me of course, I had to tamper with the recipe off the back of the can in order to justify it. I threw in a handful of raw oatmeal, a scoop of protein powder, used non-fat milk and pretended not to know how many calories are in 2/3 a cup of Dulce.

Having said that, so good! And so much! Wah! My blender’s really not big enough for that. So sad – I guess we’ll just have to drink the rest later ;-)

So after all these years, I finally got to go to New York. Not that it’s ever been super high on my list of places to go, but it’s there. Besides, I was getting really tired of mumbling, “Yeah, still haven’t been …” at dinner parties.

Scott had to go on business (again) and this time he made sure that I got to come, too – sans children. Museums, subways, getting lost (repeatedly) in Central Park – and yet one of my favorite moments was getting to have Tea at The Plaza.

Some of you might remember the old Eloise books, or at least the newish Eloise movies featuring a mischievous little girl who lives at the top of The Plaza hotel in New York. After getting lost (twice) on the way to MoMA and a full morning of museum crawling, I was tired and hungry and more than a bit overwhelmed. As Van Johnson said, “It’s not the heat – it’s the humanity.”

Needless to say I decided that much like Eloise, I needed tea at The Plaza immediately and charge it, charge it!

And it was nice, a true relief from both the August heat and the New York humanity. It was quiet and cool with big comfy chairs and a harpist. The few other guests who where there seemed to mostly be mothers and daughters having an Eloise moment. And as The Plaza has both an special Eloise Tea and a portrait of Eloise peaking in from the hall, the atmosphere in the Palm Court remains light, despite the gorgeous Tiffany style skylight and the wonderfully restored gilt and moulding that festoon the room. It could feel stuffy and ominous, oppressive and overly formal, but somehow it doesn’t. It’s rather like going to have tea with a sweet old neighbor lady. Yes, she has antique, fussy furniture and antique, fussy teacups, but she’d rather see them enjoyed and broken than mouldering on a shelf, so please sit down and help yourself. There’s plenty, and have you ever had this kind of tea before?

So I had tea. Four courses of the most expensive tea I’ve ever had, just so you know before rushing over and making an appointment. A course of tiny tea sandwiches, filled with delectables like Peekytoe crab and lamb loin; two lovely, flakey scones: one blueberries, one with currants; a nice berry fruit salad, with no melon filler so I could actually eat it; and a finishing plate of tiny little desserts like lemon tart and miniature eclairs.

Mind you, the food varies on the tea you order, but there really isn’t a “just a scone and a cup of tea, please” option. It’s Prix Fixe all the way, at a Prix that blew my food budget for two days.

The service was attentive but leisurely. Occasionally a bit too leisurely, as in “there is food coming at some point, right?”. I think I was there around two hours, start to finish.

Still, the tea itself was quite good, and the food was all well prepared. It was a lovely break for both the body and sprit on a hot and noisy summer day. Best of all? Whenever I’m reading Eloise with my own daughter or my beloved nieces, I can finally say, “And I’ve been there, just like Eloise.”

As soon as Christmas is over and the new year rung in, thoughts in my household turn to one thing: Bug-a-boo’s birthday.

The problem is that a) it’s at the end of January and b) it’s just a smidge over two months away from her brother’s, and he’s come to expect epic parties with (shudder) the whole family. Being that “the whole family” plus the three families of our very best homeschool friends runs to around 45 people, there’s no such thing as a “small party”.

But I tried – I really, really tried. We had it on a weekday, the Friday after her birthday, and just invited her homeschool friends and the grandparents.

We had a total of 13 adults, 11 kids and 1 baby. And I made everybody help.

The theme was fun, though it could have been … timed better. My goal was to make a fun, casual lunch party for my kids and their friends. No party games, no immense craft projects and *no* 8 foot long paper mache dragons (I still have nightmares about the smell of hot glue and singed flesh).

So we decided to have a cooking party where the kids would cook their own lunch and then decorate cupcakes for after. (We sent the kids to go run around and play in between stages.) We also made individualized cooking tools by making beaded name keychain kind of things and attatching them to mini bamboo spatulas and spoons. (I have no idea how they’ll hold up, but they were cute.)

We made mini pizzas using Trader Joe’s bagged pizza dough and skewered fruit kabobs using a Costco fruit tray, trimmed strawberries, and some sliced kiwi. Then we pulled out the naked cupcakes, giant bag of candy (whoppers, gummi bears, mike & ike), assorted sprinkles, and about 6 bags of tinted buttercream frosting with different tips. I even provided plain cream cheese frosting for a base coat.

Here are some helpful tips in case you want to have a cooking party of your own:

1) make absolutely sure all the beads fit over the cord the way you want them to before you put them out for the kids. Apparently the craft store people drill their own, because the decorative ender beads shown in the craft sample weren’t going on the cord without a lot of adult assistance. And power tools. Finally, even though I bought of total of about 300 alphabet beads, we ran out of Bs before all the kids finished, so you might want to actually spell out their names and check total numbers of necessary letters before the party. (With almost 30 beads per kid, you’d of thought they’d have enough.)

2) While working with real pizza dough was fun, you might consider par-baking it or just using mini-boboli crusts for groups with more than four kids or a significant number of kids under 7. It’s just a lot of work and the extra thick crusts take a really long time to bake.

3) The fruits kabobs were awesome - I got short bamboo skewers for cheap at a local Japanese import store, and they just threaded the fruit onto them. If you buy a fruit tray, like I did, you’ll probably have to cut down a lot of the pieces to make them more bite size. If you want to go really simple, you could do more canned mandarin slices, grapes and blueberries. And if you want to get really fancy, I did a test batch of 1/4” sliced mango cut into butterfly shapes with mini-cookie cutters. Pretty, but a fair bit of work for younger kids who don’t really care. The older girls thought they were awesome.

4) Everyone thought the cupcakes were awesome. And what kid hasn’t dreamed of going crazy with a frosting tube? They all did, and we still had tons of frosting left over, which was my intention – I didn’t want to hear about how so-and-so used the last of the sky blue. Oh – and due to the preponderance of pink-loving girls in our party, I made two tubes of pink in order to reduce waiting time. I used disposable piping bags which I sealed with duct tape – it wasn’t particularly attractive, but there was no nasty leaking out the top. I also used the trick of keeping the icing tip down in heavy glasses to make it easier to carry, take up less room on the table (and in the fridge), and make less mess.

The boys especially loved the candy. One of my favorite creations looked like an alien landscape where a mineral deposit of technicolor mike-and-ike had forced its way to the surface.

Finally, you might want to only use half as much cupcake batter per cup than usual – this way the kids can decorate two shallow cupcakes instead of one standard size.

5) Multiple cheap plastic tablecloths were good – I switched out after the pizza.

6) With so many younger kids, giving each their own birthday candle and then hurrying through the presents while they sat around and ate their creations worked well for us.

7) We contemplated ordering plain canvas aprons from Oriental Trading Company and doing paint on handprints as a take home, but one of my girl friends volunteered to make all the kids chef’s hats instead. I still think it’s a good idea, though you may want to check drying times before you commit.

Now, because I was so utterly disorganized, there was a lot of “go play in the basement, kids” while the moms and grandmas tidied up and prepared the next round, but at the end of the afternoon the kids had played hard, eaten well, and largely filled up on fruit and homemade pizza before they ever got near the cupcakes. If I were to do it again … okay, no – I can’t see myself ever doing this again for a group of eleven mixed kids aged 3 - 8. However, this is still a fun idea and would work really well if you have a smaller group of kids of more uniform age and skill level. If you really must do it for a large group of kids, then I’d go with sandwich wraps with a variety of fillings and topping instead of something that needed to be baked.

You could also try other fun things like just doing a cupcake party and even go as far a having illustrated decoration cards that show how to make your cupcake look like a ladybug or a hedgehog. The book Cupcakes from the Cupcake Doctor has some neat ideas, though I don’t care much for boxed cake mix.

(For easy cupcakes, try Nigella’s super easy, food-processor fairy cake recipe in How to Eat - you chuck softened butter, eggs, flour and leavener into the food processor, whiz it around a few times, add a little milk, whiz till smooth and you’re done. Easy-cheezy.)

For boy-boys or more serious cooks, pick something fun and really hands-on (that you’ve learnd how to do in advance) like actually making your own pizza dough or stuffing wantons or designing the ultimate sandwich - there are tons of ideas online.

Cooking with kids is fun – just plan for their age and interest and keep it simple.

And be sure to get someone to take pictures.

So the other morning at o’dark-hundred my son came wandering in to tell Scott about his latest problem. “Dad,” he said seriously, “I don’t like yogurt in my cereal.” After some investigation it was determined that it wasn’t actually a cooking experiment gone awry – Gabe had grabbed the only milk carton he could reach, the one that said B-U-T-T-E-R-M-I-L-K.

An honest mistake, if more than a little disgusting – all those pricey little Kashi Mighty Bites guys floating around in a pool of goo – but really not his fault.

It’s the Milk Man.

Well, it’s the Milk Man and my insane need to sample everything in every possible combination. You see, we signed up for home milk delivery from Smith Brothers which has been great for convenience but bad for temptation. Whole milk, 2%, 1%, non-fat; buttermilk, yogurt, soy – hundreds of fun to try combinations, conveniently delivered to my front porch once a week.

I never grew up with such extravagence. We had a cow. No really – a big old bossie named Laurie, after my cousin. (Since she and I were the first girls born to the family, Pa named a cow after each of us. I still remember the packages labelled “Cindy - Chuck Roast” in the deep freeze.)

Now, I know – glass gallon jars full of the morning’s milking, with a thick layer of cream rising to the top sound really picturesque.

They sucked.

We had to keep a big metal ladle in there for stirring in the cream and dipping out the milk, and even after you managed to spill milk all over yourself and the counter, you were still left with nasty globs of cream floating around your milk. Raw milk does not taste like the stuff in the plastic jug, and your average 8 year old doesn’t care how “natural” it is any more than they care for gathering happy little brown eggs from a musty old chicken coop.

My parents didn’t care so much about the natural stuff, either; they cared about how much cheaper it was for feeding four hungry kids. Milk for breakfast, lunch and dinner: “Drink up kids – there’s still a half gallon left in the fridge and we need room for the two gallons I’ll get this evening.”

Scott on the other hand, grew up with a Milk Man. (His family also had a Costco membership, a swimming pool and a freezer full of Bagel Bites – hard proof of his decadent, bourgeois childhood, had I needed it.) Needless to say, he got into the milk man groove right away. “Just fill out the order form, Cyn, and when he leaves a bill, just throw the check in the milk box.”

Such luxury! Such indulgence! Happy little boxes of homogenized, hormone free goodness, lined up in my tidy little metal box. No special trips to the grocery store with screaming kids and no cows. I really don’t know why it inspires me to such levels of ordering excess; maybe it’s just the rows of pristine check boxes on the order form. But I remain confident that one day I’ll figure out the magic combination and move beyond the order form and into the land of the standing order.

Maybe then, on that blissful day, my son will have learned to tell the difference between buttermilk and 2%.

Unless 1% is better.

I’m sitting here looking at my breakfast: two poached eggs, lightly dabbed with butter and sprinkled with sea salt, atop the new Milton’s English Muffins that Costco’s started carrying.

I’m going straight to hell. Whole eggs, butter and salt?! And the eggs aren’t even cooked into little rubbery, food-safe hockey pucks? Aren’t I even pretending to diet? I’m telling you – food police, straight to my house to cart me off to hell.

Of course the eggs are the Wilcox Omega 3, free range, probably-doesn’t-make-a-darn-bit-of-difference specials, the butter is Costco’s industrial organic and the muffins are allegedly whole grain (not bad, btw), but still, Straight to Hell.

(Just don’t tell them about the full fat organic peanut butter in the cupboard – it’s just for the kids, I swear!)

In Nigella Lawson’s wonderful How to Eat, she describes herself as “unhelpfully obsessive about children’s parties.”

I can empathize.

I have tried for years to keep my own unhelpful obsession under control. My son’s first birthday party was combined with two of his second cousins and resulted in me trying to feed and entertain around forty of our closest relatives. My kids have ten cousins, five aunts, four uncles, the traditional two sets of grandparents, four great-grandparents, and a full assortment of great-aunts, and first cousins-once-removed. And all of them live here.

This is why I try very hard not to have parties at my house. This is also why my daughter has traditionally been shafted out of anything more complex than cake and playtime at the mall – the nine months between my son’s birthday and Sophie’s isn’t long enough. Tragically, my son and husband have begun conspiring against me. Last year’s collusion resulted in my producing a seven foot long dragon pinata, knight’s armor, princess dresses, archery tournaments and paper mache dragon’s eggs for fourteen. As Nigella would say, it was an act of madness.

Since the mere site of tissue paper still causes me to twitch uncontrolably, I tried to put my foot down when my daughter’s birthday approached. It didn’t work. Fine, I said, fine – have the expletive party. But you need to have it somewhere else and all I’m doing is making cake.

All I’m doing. Right. The pretty yellow Dixie’s General cake in my Southern Living cookbook took me four bloody hours of zesting and egg white beating to produce an so-so citrus chiffon with toxically sweet icing. The three attempts at Nigella’s fool proof Victoria Sponge resulted in three sodden, greasy disasters that proved that I am that fool. In defeat, I fell back on my Devil’s Food Cupcakes – adapted to big square pans, since cupcakes just weren’t complicated enough. Oh, and because I was insane.

The morning of the party found me ransacking my local QFC for decent white chocolate in a desperate attempt to produce frosting that didn’t suck. A mere hour before the party found me pressing my 5 year old into indentured pbj-making servitude while I frantically attempted to decorate the cake with a slapdash Maisy. (Hey, he’s the one who got all weepy when I told him I wasn’t going to decorate sister’s cake.)

It turned out okay, once I came down from the energy drink buzz and stopped yelling at people. The cake was fairly good; the Maisy plates I special ordered from the UK were really cute. And the big paper Maisy house I ordered made a great centerpiece. But I think we’re going to have pudding for Gabe’s next birthday. Maybe I can find a good recipe for the party. And electroshock therapy for afters.

The Kabuki Sushi Platter

Uwajimaya’s splash page congratulates the Seahawks and offers 10% off sushi and party platters under the heading “Feeding the 12th Man”.

Hardly original, but still amusing. With Chinese New Year in full swing (see Seattle’s International District’s calendar for the February 4th, day long event schedule), Seattle’s largest Asian market still has time to try and bring tasty Super-chow to the masses.

Mmmm … bento

So what if it’s not really an “only in Seattle” moment – it’s 10% off sushi! And while it may be unpalatable (if not unfathomable) in other parts of the country, it goes down pretty well ‘round here.

I’m just *so* clever. Or at least that’s what I thought when I moved a tray of tea things up to my bedroom yesterday – the better to facilitate an evening cuppa, my dear. Little bags of tea; shatterproof and sealable containers of sugar and honey; those little stir straws, and a pair of sturdy coffee mugs. After all, I’m not deranged enough to leave Wedgewood where my little destruct-a-boo can reach it.

And yet apparently I’m still stupid enough to leave a half pot of tea up there.

I wonder if the Romans knew you could make quite passable cement out of apple blossom honey and sugar? Or that countertops so encrusted need a compassionate sprinkling of tea and copious quantities of Costco bandaids?

The princess pleads entrapment. I’m trying very hard to be thankful she didn’t find the loose leaf tea I had hidden in the drawer.

But then again, there’s always tomorrow.