My daughters Twilight Cake

I've spent the last day and a half on this cake.  By no means is it perfect, but I'm proud of how it came out.  I know the next time I try this it will be even better.  I focused on a good cake, knowing my decor would be questionable when I got done. So if it isn't pretty, it will be yummy.  I used a recipe from an old cake shop that use to be in Arcata California called Chocoholics.  It's a tripple layer (3 different kinds of chocolate) cake with buttercream frosting, blueberry/strawberry jam and chocolate granache in between the layers.  It's covered in a butter cream frosting, then the fondant decorations.  I'll post the recipe another day when I'm not so tired.  In the mean time here are the pictures of what I made: (PS.  The cake plate was a nice gift from a friend at work.  A very nice piece that I appreciate very much.)

Roasted Veggies, Homemade Marshmallows, & Apple Pie Experiments

Yesterday I went on a bit of a cooking frenzy.  I was inspired by my kids to batch up some breakfast items.  Every morning I get "what is there to eat?" thing and there is never anything they want.  So I decided to solve that problem for the next couple of weeks.  So I batched up (with their help) a bunch of breakfast burritos and pancakes.  That got me rolling.  I had read something about "breakfast pies".  I asked the girls if they'd eat such a thing.  Both said no resoundingly!  But then the last box of apples from our tree sitting in our garage popped in my mind.  So I let my imagination chew on that and "breakfast pies" for a bit and proceeded to make a shopping list. 

I couldn't decide what to make.  I had several ideas in my head, so I decided to buy refrigerator crescent rolls, but then I found something better.  Crescent Recipe Creations.  I took this stuff home and placed 6 pieces of dough in 6 muffin tins.  I proceeded to make various mini apple pies involving fresh apples, cooked apples in a pie mixture, 3 kinds of cheese, and bacon.  Yes bacon.  All turned out good, but there will be further experimentation to perfect the faves (based on my families' so sophisticated taste buds - and I'm not joking here).  I'll post my final recipe when done.  Here are a few pictures of what I did:

 

 

 

Just FYI.  The pies involving bacon were a hit!

Then I went on to make dinner.  I've been craving roasted root veggies lately, so I made up a pasta dish involving roasted carrots, parsnips, turnips, onions, garlic, celery and mushrooms.

I peeled and chopped up a turnip, two parsnips, and 3 carrots.  I then peeled and quartered an onion, chopped the ends off of about 10 cloves of garlic (so you can easily squeeze out the roasted garlic), chopped up 2 ribs of celery, and cleaned about 10 button mushrooms.  I tossed them with about 1/8 cup of olive oil, kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.  I roasted all of that in a 450 degree oven for 30 minutes.  I then cooked up a little over a half lb of campenelle pasta.  I tossed the veggies and pasta with my butter sage sauce, which was about 1 tablespoon of bacon grease (from the pie project) 3 tablespoons of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil.  I threw in 1/4 cup of sage leaves and fried them in the butter mixture until they were nice an deliciously crisp.

It was a fall comfort delight!

Then, for the  Pièce de résistance!

 

Homemade Marshmallows!  These were so easy and fun.  I'm not a huge fan of marshmallows, so I wondered if homemade would be better.  I figured if they weren't, my kids love marshmallows, so nothing would go to waste.

Were they good?

Hell yeah!

Then I found out this is similar to the recipe Thomas Keller uses along with homemade graham crackers (this recipe isn't his).  Guess what I'm thinking of making next......LOL!

If you want to try making your own (a fun way to impress people at a potluck and it's simple) you can find the recipe at Epicurious.com or where I originally saw it at Bon Appetit Magazine.

So now I'm dragging my behind off the computer and heading out to my garden to produce another round of food to cook and write about.

Happy Fall!

Your MFK Fisher Quote For The Day

From the compilation of her works The Art Of Eating, Her first book Serve It Forth, written in 1937, chapter, "Sing of Dinner in a Dish":

" 'Always have a Chinese cook,' said the woman who had followed her sailor seven times round the globe, and settled at last inside the golden Gate. 'Yes, always have a Chinese cook-and never go into the kitchen!'

Is this foul slander, or the cool tongue of wisdom? When on the bottom of a casserole doth grimed grease hiss, is ignorance bliss? Probably.

Surely I have eaten many a tart that felt the floor before it felt my plate, and more than a hundred bowls of soup whose temperature was tested, consciously or not, by a fat thumb. I have even pushed dead flies to one side of an omelette or ragout, and eaten to the last bite undaunted. I have not really minded, inside of me, because what I ate was good, and I do not thing that good food can come from a bad kitchen."

Just Ducky

A nice article in the North Coast Journal about raising ducks. I particularly like his comment on foie gras.
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/issues/2009/10/08/just-ducky/

Kimberly's Syrah 2006

This is the wine we had with dinner last night for our anniversary. I decided if its got the name Kimberly, it must be good, and I was right. It was delicious wine. I found it strong and complex and it went well with everything we had served at Folie Douce in Arcata (http://www.holyfolie.com/ ), so it was a pleasant surprise to read in our local paper today that the great Robert Parker has given this local wine of ours, grown in Orleans down highway 96 on the Klamath River in Humboldt County California a rating of 90, designating it an outsanding wine. I must agree!
Here's the article:
http://www.times-standard.com/business/ci_13462509

Frozen Peanut Butter Pie with Candied Bacon

Interesting recipe! I may have to give it a try just for the sheer novelty of it.

2000s Recipes + Menus: Gourmet.com

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Manic Batching Sunday

I don't know if you can see just how much rain is coming down in this picture, but it's our first good rain in months. It's unusual to go so long without here behind the Redwood Curtain. It's been so long that I'm actually very happy to see it, as is my well, my garden, and my youngest, who is currently out frolicking in the rain getting soaked to the bone. I think I'll be making a fire tonight.

My main point in this picture is, that it turns out to be a perfect day to stay inside and do some batch cooking and canning. Yesterday was nice and sunny, and I'm happy I took the opportunity to spend some time collecting seeds and working on my garden. Today, is an inside kind of day.

So...... I made some banana muffins (needed to use up those super ripe banana's) to have as an option for breakfast on those busy weekday mornings.


Then I got a batch of bread dough going so I can attempt to make some pecan sticky rolls tomorrow as another breakfast option, and so I can have some nice warm fresh baked bread for dinner one night in the next week. (I could just eat the bread for dinner and skip everything else!)
Then I started in on batching up some breakfast burritos as just one more option for breakfast. I should be covered for the next 3 weeks with all this. I thought about pancakes and waffles too, but we've been eating off my last two batches for the last month or two and everyone is sick of them, so on to something new and fresh. I was inspired by the Homesteading Housewife to do the burritos. You can find her post on this here:
http://homesteadinghousewife.blogspot.com/2009/01/breakfast-burritos-batch-cooking.html.

I don't have near as big a family as her so I don't need to make 84 burrito's, so my recipe is about 1/3 of hers. I technically should have used 2 dozen eggs, but didn't have enough to spare and used 1 dozen otherwise my recipe was about a third of hers. I ended up with 18 burrito's (probably would've been about 10 more if I'd used 2 dozen eggs), which is plenty.

I started with 1 lb of bulk breakfast sausage ( I highly recommend Loleta Meat Market for this) 1/2 chopped bell pepper and one small chopped white onion and 2 cloves of garlic. Cook until sausage is brown.
I added the beaten eggs and cooked. I then shredded the cheddar cheese. I set up my assembly line for putting the burritos together.
I recommend you warm the tortillas before folding into a burrito, they're more pliable that way and less likely to tear.

Once you've placed a spoonful of the sausage/egg mixture and a glob of cheese, fold into a burrito, then wrap in foil. (As much as I love to cook and eat Mexican food, I'm completely inept when it comes to folding a burrito. I can make Mole' sauce, but can't wrap a burrito! Go Figure!)
Once they're all wrapped, place them in Ziplock freezer bags and label. You're good to go!
Happy harvest!