Vicky Learns to Cook

 It's Monday. We are in the no mans land of holiday between Christmas and New Years.  Today was Utility room day, not much to do in that room except recycle some bottles and bags, clean up my stuff from culinary and martial arts classes. There's a lot of stuff involved in both. I ended up putting the extra vases in the closet and realized that's where the ironing board was, not that I've needed it lately.   All that's left is to vacuum.  It feels like a chili kind of day. Very slushy and cold outside.  chili !!

Osouji, essentially "Big Cleaning", is a Japanese ritual of the  household that is highly believed to cleanse the home and purify the residence in order to welcome “Toshigami,” the kami (Shinto deity) of the New Year. There is more to it than just cleaning, but the idea that I am taking from it is to prepare for the New Year, one that certainly that will be spent at home for the most part as the pandemic lingers on.  I got the idea from my previous dojo where we cleaned the mats at the beginning of the year.  It isnt like me to want to clean, but the idea of having gone through every room, knowing where everything is, organizing, removing things never used, and knowing that at least for the moment it is truly deeply clean, does appeal to me.  It wouldn't help if I had someone else do it, since there are thousands of little decisions to make as I go - what to keep? what to discard? how deep is deep cleaning?  And it's a personal thing to do. To make the home most comfo

 I've been nose deep in books lately.  In the hopes that I have more time to read books,  I ordered three more in the series I just read.  Here is the first book: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger.  Looking forward to Curtsies & Conspiracies, Manners & Mutiny, and Waistcoats & Weaponry.  I'm sure some of you have read them already. No Spoilers! I brought my head up long enough to see the cookie supply was getting low, so I grabbed some rice krispies and made one of my favorites from my Mother in Law's recipes - Date Skillet Krispie cookies.  This is one of those recipes that come out hot and you have to roll them or manipulate them while hot or they dont work. So you hear a lot of "ooh! Tsss Hot! Ah!" while making them. Cant exactly surprise someone with them haha.  On the hydroponic gardening front, the lettuce wilted and died, not sure why. Too much fertilizer/nutrients I guess? But the basil has begun to germinate, so I'm hopeful that t

 Happy Winter Solstice! (sings "here comes the sun...") An update on the sourdough starters - the Royal Oak grape sourdough starter was pitched last night. It started smelling really bad, not like sourdough bad but like moldy cheese and barf bad. Even if that was the way that one is supposed to go, I didnt want to eat that flavor in a bread!! But the San Francisco starter that I bought is turning out nicely. Tomorrow I start discarding, so it's getting close to being active and ready.  I did some reading up on this and I think that for the future I will also dry some of the starter in case things go badly, i dont have to keep buying starter to get going again. I dont have a lot of freezer space or fridge space so that will be my insurance policy.  I've been getting cookie orders so I need to run to the store again to get more ingredients and boxes. I have  a repeat customer from last year! pretty exciting :) I spent the rest of the day making cookies, both for an orde

 Today has been dubbed cookie day.  Because we are doing a gift exchange in my small group for Bible Study, I am making a couple dozen cookies for each person to pass, which means 6 dozen cookies. And eventually more... I had also planned on making sour dough bread from the sourdough starter I got from the store, but since  I got it yesterday, I dont have enough time to make it for my dish to pass tomorrow (  need like 5 days or so to go from a dry starter to an active one). I didnt remember this, so I went to the local bread store and got a couple of loaves - country sourdough and a lemon rosemary sourdough. I'm sure it will be fine.  So I have a San Francisco Starter being activated and a hometown Starter on day 4 of 14. Lot's of bread in my future if it all works.  So I'm concentrating on cookies then.  I have Snickerdoodles in the oven, and Oatmeal Raisin, and finally Chocolate Chip.  Snickerdoodles Chocolate chip and Oatmeal Raisin I kept changing my mind but these are

 Yesterday's project was to make a Sweet Potato Pie for a sweet friend who wanted to do something for their adopted couple.  No pictures but I also had to give the dog a bath /wash the towel and bath mat again, since he ran through a mud pit in our  back yard. Ugh. Not the way I wanted to spend my day off. ------------------------------------ Today, rather than bake, Hubby took me to lunch at the local Mexican restaurant - Yummo! And tonight I have plans with my girlfriend for Italian food - Yummo again! So I started an hydroponic mini garden with a 2 ltr bottle.  Getting ready: Nutrients + Water in the jug, Coconut coir in the bowl in water Moistened coir in the 2 liter bottle (cut bottle at the curve and invert)  There is a wick going from the side down into the nutrient water in the base of the bottle Gonna grow basil in this one Why foil jacket? Not because it gets cold, but to prevent algae Masking tape makes the sharp edges less lethal. Seeds are planted and the foil jacket i

 Officially on Holiday, I started in on my hobbies.  Well I really started last night, making a couple batches of fortune cookies. Shh dont tell anyone, its a surprise for my sword class. I thought they looked right but I was told by the Hubby and Daughter that they were too thick/soft in the middle and generally too big. Dang.  After work I grabbed a bunch of black grapes, unwashed so as to capture the natural mold on the skin, and crushed them into a cheesecloth over a bunch of flour water. Why do you ask? The bread people will tell you this is how you make your own starter for sourdough. Its a long process, though and wont be ripe for baking until New Year's Eve.  I bought some from San Fran so I can make it sooner though, no patience :) And now we wait 14 days (with some tasks in the middle). 

[one unsuspecting Monday morning...] Aw crap, it's happened.  Ginger Salad I got the call from the doctor this morning that my cholesterol levels were bad and my sugar was just over the line of bad. It's the call we know is coming, but we dread.  Over the last 4 years, after having gotten to my goal weight, I backslid hard. It happens. I got really good at making things full of sugar and fat in culinary school and made treats nearly every night. It's not their fault.  Everything that was a craving food I ate. I binged at night until I got tired of eating, not giving a second thought to my health, just my waistline. I lamented how crappy I felt in the morning, and how my clothes don't fit and how I hate shopping for clothes.  I can't say I have the best attitude about this.  [two days later...] I'm not sure the scale is right, but it seems like I lost 5 pounds already. I've been eating 3 meals, trying to  lessen the amount of fried food, butter, white carbs,

Your Earliest Memory My memories seem to center around a place. Other than impressions and dreams about our place in Dayton, Ohio, I think my first real memories happened in Wichita Falls, Texas. I was 5 when we moved there from Ohio and we moved away when I was 8.  I have a lot of memories about Wichita Falls; Standing in the driveway while it snowed for the first time, Staring at the screaming cicadas on the Shumard Oak trees, Planting long thin black marigold seeds with little puffies on the end and getting a sunburn from the 110 degree day, Hanging in my tree in the back yard that seemed to be built for me and wondering at the big red dog named Blue.  I remember pulling violets from the grass and honeysuckle from the fence. I remember my first crush lived across the street and my first best friend did too, but on the other side. I remember a funny lady lived next door who used to babysit us.  The problem is I am not very good with sequence  of events, so I don't remember which

Five problems with social media  The first problem I see is that social media takes away from physical experiences. When we were kids in the 80s, you spent a lot of time outside and together. My first experience with spices actually growing  outside was with pepper. My friend Krissy's mom had little short plants with little seeds on them, she said they were black pepper plants. I had no idea up until then that you could do that. Mom and dad grew tomatoes and cabbage and things like that, but spices? I didn't know. I was fascinated.  Nor would I have seen it, then asked about it, had I not experienced it. If I had been on my phone with her I never would have had that experience. Nor the countless others, like riding bikes to a farm or learning to do my first cartwheel, or ice skating in my back yard or making up a soccer game where the beech trees were the goal posts or the winter of 1978, turning snow drifts into actual igloos! Another more malignant issue is that it is so very

 Ugh, I always forget that this time of year gets so busy all on its own! And on top of that I was stuck and was not getting around to making stuff out of the cookbook. I think what was holding me back was there were items in the book that I not only already tried in my classes but that I didnt love (see hard rolls).  But there is a lot I'm excited to try. So new rules: I have a list of recipes. I will pick something at least one time a week that is interesting to me, such as sweet rolls, and whatever I make, I will post pictures and blog about it in here. I think Sunday nights are a good night for that. Here's to sweet rolls this week! I havent decided if I'm going full FALL BAKING yet, but tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox, so it's probably going to at least have something fallish in it.  See you Sunday night! Be safe,  Vicky

  Uh Oh. I realized at 6pm that the things I bought ingredients for, I didnt have TIME for.  So I thought, here's a new challenge, can I make something LIKE those things, using a different method, and make it still yummy? I had no choice but to find out.  Chicken Kiev So this dish is made with a compound butter with tarragon, garlic, parsley, pepper and butter, mixed together, then frozen. That takes about 30 mins. Reviewing the recipe, it was bout here that I realized I had around a half hour before the crew mutinied. I didnt have time to do this and bake the chicken.  The rest of the recipe calls for pounding, then folding the chicken around the frozen butter, and putting the toothpick into the chicken to hold it together, then egging and breading the chicken.  To speed it up, instead I added the spices for the butter into a bowl, and breadcrumbs with some salt and mixed it together. In another bowl I added the egg and milk.  I had butterflied chicken, so I just cut the butterfli

 Cape Gooseberries are not gooseberries at all.  In fact they are roundish with a husk, but thats the only thing that is similar to them.  Gooseberries are green and purple in color, with zebra stripes and they look like a grapes weird cousin with a tail. To me, they taste like a natural version of a sweet tart, but more on the tart side.  Cape gooseberries are yellow with a cape (thus the name) which is a husk around them, similar to a tomatillo. The fruit tastes like a very sweet grape tomato mixed with a mango. It's strange at first but very addictive.  Cape Gooseberry Gooseberries The scone, made with cream, and mixed with lemon make a perfect accompaniment to the cape gooseberry, very complex and sweet and almost floral.  This was not in my plan, to buy cape gooseberries (or as you may know them "ground cherries") but when I saw them, my first thought was Gooseberries! I love those guys! Then I realized what I really had, I pinged my friend Jen who tried to introduce

 Quick check in: made potato rolls yesterday.  And to answer your questions:  Yes they use mashed potatoes The reason they need potatoes is it makes them more moist Yes you can use mashed potatoes with butter and milk Yes you can also use just potatoes that are mashed yes they take a long time (1 hour of proofing, 1 hour of final proofing) Yes they are worth it! They couldve used more salt, but they were near perfect.  Really good with butter and honey  And yes they are nearly gone already.  Bread is much loved in this family.  --Vicky

 This week's quick breads were Orange and Lemon walnut breads:  Lemon Walnut Bread Orange Walnut Bread Another fun fact about the cookbook is that sometimes the recipe is made for the BIG machines. This means instead of a quick bread about a pound or so, we end up with 5 pounds of quick bread.  This means I need to put my training to use again and figure out what a 1 pound loaf might be. Because I wanted to try both lemon and orange, I made both at the same time, so I cut the recipe by 5 and then doubled it.  This is the math. Seems like I got it right since it turned out okay. But I couldve gone with 2 pounders.  No baking job can be done without a mess, sadly.  This one was fairly spectacular, actually.  In order to make pastry flour, I mixed cake flour and all purpose (1:1) . My technique left a bit to be desired ,however. I put them both in a bowl and put the lid on, then shook it.  the mess! The breads turned out well, however. So its all good. Next week, we get into rolls.  S

The Ugly Apple Dumpling Ugly Apple Dumpling finished  This one should be easy.  All it calls for is puff pastry, which I decided to buy, not make, raisins, apples, cinnamon sugar, and egg wash.  The problem is, trying to get the dumpling to look pretty.  I only had enough pastry for 3 of them, so I gave the extra apple to the boy. I'm fairly certain he didnt explode when he ate something good for him, so that's a plus.  Laid out pastry dough Adding cinnamon sugar and raisins to the center I folded it a few times, sort of like pleats in a dress.  As you can see it kinda looks ... weird.  I was to cut out a circle and put it on top to make it look decorative, but didnt have enough pastry for that. So I stuck a raisin on top. This will likely burn, you know, but it holds the pleats together.  yep I was right, the raisin burned and the edges were a bit singed.  Baked apple dumlings I gotta admit tho, they turned out to be pretty darn good. I'd even say it turned into a swan, mu