I think I'll stick with the more traditional peanut butter and celery as a snack from now on.
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I decided to make a cake yesterday. It called for softened butter, but all we had were sticks of butter straight from the fridge. Without a microwave, I needed a way to soften the butter. I took a gratin dish, filled it half way with hot water from the tap and put the sticks of butter in for about 20 seconds on each side. And viola, softened butter. All the other techniques have yielded melted butter, not softened.
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I worked from home this afternoon to take care of an injured pup. Having eaten breakfast at my desk (yogurt) & skipped lunch trying to get everything wrapped up at the office, I decided to make something that could jump start my late afternoon, brunch or a fry up. I went for the leftover greens and onions and added a couple of eggs from the chickens and a cup of tea; no meat this time. It was just what I needed to fuel the late afternoon and make some real headway on the tasks at hand.
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It's been busy since my last post. I've travelled back to Iowa for a short visit with family, up to Fairbanks for work and then lots of projects around the house. New and challenging activities have consisted of planting three new trees in our front yard on Saturday by myself. I planted a white spruce and two State Fair apple trees (in the background of the second picture you can see a landscaping project I did earlier this summer. Landscaping is WAY different than gardening, but that's an entirely different post).
I've also been smoking salmon. Zach went dipnetting on Thursday and Friday while I stayed home and played dog whisperer to Honey (she's not been herself lately, but I'm not sure who she's trying to be). Unfortunately, he had to head to Fairbanks on Sunday which left him just enough time to clean and fillet the fish, so that left the smoking part to me. Last night I smoked two batches using alder chips and the charcoal grill. Tonight I have two more batches to do.Comments [0]
Update: The edible border has gotten much fuller and without harvesting could turn into a hedge. Luckily, I've got co-workers that love kale.
Running out of space to transplant my garden starts this spring, I decided to plant them as borders around the front walk. Of course, they've been there for a month at this point, but they're finally big enough that I thought I'd share how they look. As you can tell one is kale and the other is dinosaur chard. And, yes, I need to do some weeding
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I've never had the occasion to make a marbled cake, so I gave it a try this weekend when I found a recipe that used booze, the theme of our latest gourmet night. The result was a rum scented marble cake. I filled the center of the cake with fresh blackberries and raspberries and then made some rum vanilla whipped cream to top it all off. The cake was a hit and turned out well. I was so relieved as I wasn't sure it had marbled and I wasn't able to find out until cutting it in front of all my foodie friends.
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I worked from home on Wednesday and having some extra time with no commute, I went trolling for recipes. I found this one, which happened to be a completely doable recipe from the French Laundry cookbook and we had all of the ingredients (minus the black truffles, which we omitted anyway) in the house. It was super easy and very good. This success makes me want to tackle more of the recipes in the cookbook.
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We had a new coworker of mine and his wife over for dinner this week and I made these. I've never made them before. I ended up cutting them open and filling them with store bought coffee ice cream and topping them with homemade orange liquer and brandy chocolate sauce. They were so easy that I'm now inspired to make large ones and turn them into cream puffs with fresh whipped cream and strawberries. Can you tell I'm hungry!?
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We took advantage of the nice weather and lit the fire bowl and had a couple of friends over. When there's fire (and beer), might as well make s'mores. We used bars of sea salt chocolate and ginger chocolate. We also figured out a way to melt the chocolate using the tool used to lift the bowl lid. They were delicious and messy!
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I keep three blogs with the help of my husband and some foodie friends:
todayitried.com
patrioticandromantic.com
anchoragegourmet.posterous.com
