*spla*

[ksmith]

Lots of recipe/food discussion. Be warned.

The initial plan, formulated this morning, was a simple one. Buy the few things needed for Thanksgiving, then come home and write.

So. On the way to the grocery store, I stopped by the hardware big box to look for a nice shelving unit. I am trying to salvage the three hanging basket lavender plants that I bought a month or so ago by wintering them indoors, but the things are freakin’ huge. They didn’t fit on the small shelving unit that I had set in front of the one window in this house that has decent southern exposure, so I looked for different shelving. Found a nice chrome wire unit, like those you see in walk-in pantries–OMG, do I want a walk-in pantry some day–and snapped it up.

Then came groceries, which included all the fresh veggies for the Turkey Day not-a-turkey. I’m making beef short ribs this year, with buttermilk mashed potatoes and roasted Brussels sprouts, and I didn’t want to wait until the last minute to get what was needed.

Home. Fed pups. Fed me. Assembled shelving unit. Moved large lavender baskets onto same. Yea, they fit, as do the other herb pots. Then I saw the mess atop the dining room table, and something in me snapped. Culled catalogs and sorted receipts, bills, notes, and all the other effluvia–it’s not perfect, but it’s a hella better than it was. Some order achieved. I can take clutter for a little while, but at some point I need to regain control of my space, that’s just how it goes.

Then I made marmalade. At least, I started making marmalade. It’s a two-stage recipe. First stage consists of boiling the sliced fruit in water, taking it off the heat and adding the sugar, then letting the mix sit at room temp overnight. Tomorrow, I cook the stuff until it’s that rich orangy-brown color. I’m not trying any fancy additions like whisky or liqueurs for this first effort. I just want to see if I can make something that tastes better than the store-bought stuff, which just doesn’t thrill me. I didn’t use Seville oranges or Meyer lemons, just navels and plain ol’ little lemons.

Then, I made cookies. My standby ginger cookies.** As usual, I substituted white whole wheat flour for half the all-purpose. I usually wind up with a drier dough as a result, but this time I ended up with something downright crumbly. In the past, I added additional molasses to moisten things up, and wound up overwhelming the ginger and spices. This time, I just worked with it as is. The warmth from my hands was enough to soften the dough balls so they held together, though I had to handle them carefully. But the resulting cookies were good, a little crisp outside and very light inside.

I was finally able to sit down a little after 7. One load of laundry’s in the washer, another in the dryer. Hockey on in the background. Pups are asleep. My feet hurt. I need more coffee. Time to write.

Where in hell did the day go?

**If it seems as though I make a lot of Ina Garten recipes, well, I do. Her food is basic, relatively simple to make, and tasty.

Mirrored from Kristine Smith.

Comments

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

In the distant past (possibly even before you were born) my mother's friend Dorothy C. decided to make lime marmalade from Mexican limes. Somewhere in the process, she called my mother to see if Mother had some extra sugar (there were no 24 hr, 7 days/week grocery stores in prehistory in South Texas. Mother said "Sure," and took our sack of sugar over to her friend's house.

The little (cheap back then) Mexican limes were incredibly sour and bitter, and (as my mother said) "There is not enough sugar in the world..." The sugar finally jelled all right, but the taste was still so not-even-beginning-to-be-sweet that the product was then christened "Ma C's tile cleaner and scurvy cure." She and Mrs. C- laughed about it for years.

I made orange marmalade once for my mother, who loved orange marmalade (I don't. It's another mother/daughter point of non-intersection.) I used the oranges off her tree, Valencia oranges, and promptly discovered the sheer misery that is slicing very thin slices from oranges. Misery for me, anyway. We didn't have the world's best knives. However, the marmalade was pronounced a success, possibly because I was her daughter. I know my other jams and jellies were good (they were things I could eat: wild blackberry jelly, dewberry jelly, wild strawberry jam cooked over a campfire, wild huckleberry jam...) So it's remotely possible that my orange marmalade was good...

Tomorrow when I get home from church I'll be making spiced pear jam with which to baste the ham. I bought a bag of beat-up ripe pears today for that purpose.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I made some strawberry preserves a few months ago. They came out okay, but the flavor was subdued and a strong-tasting bread like a sourdough or heavy whole grain overwhelmed it.

I don't know if I sliced thinly enough. I like a marmalade with more substance, and cooking softens the peel, so if I have to chew a bit, I will survive.

I love to cook with pears. The cranberry relish I make on occasion contains pears, and Ina made an apple-pear crumble last week that I would love to try.