Fat and Crafty.com

I have a kitchen aid. It sits in the front hall, in its box under the mail table. It’s been there since we moved in. Seems an inefficient way to use it for baking, truth of the matter is it’s broken.

Not only has my kitchen aid been broken for over 2 years, but I haven’t missed it… much. A recent post on a foodie community got me thinking about gadgets we rely on , and the disservice we do ourselves when we become over reliant. A fellow cook was looking for advice on how to make cheese straws without a food processor. She lamented that she didn’t have a food processor, was it going to be possible to make them without one?

It took a number of people assuring the original poster that yes it would work just fine with a pastry blender or a couple of forks, that yes cheese straws would work out just fine. I don’t blame the poster for her hesitation.

Even in the baking I do, I see so much encouragement to pull out the stand mixer that I question if I will be successful working by hand. I wondered with the marshmallows from the last Daring Bakers challenge. It was the one thing folks insisted I needed a stand mixer for, but the cookies came out ok anyway.

The plethora of recipes, the popularity of food network, and the rise of the superstar chef make me wonder if we are shortchanging ourselves. Instead of looking at a recipe, identifying the process and looking for alternatives, we feel like a lame duck when we are short a tool. Those cheese straws are simpler then you think. If you look closely enough at the recipe and the process you’ll recognize that this is close to a pie crust recipe. If you know how to handle a pie crust, you know how to handle a cheese a basic straw.

This is true of a number of recipes.

Let’s step back and look at the Milanos. While following the ingredients and process for the cookies. I realized that I was making a variation on a tuile, a “batter” cookie that gets piped onto a nonstick surface. It can be molded dipped or filled. The base cookies for the pinwheels turned out to be close to a basic piecrust or shortbread cookie.

Of course, it takes experience to get here. You have to have an awareness of what you are making and what properties different processes impart. You have to have experienced making pie crust to see the similarities, and for it to have any value. With that experience you’ll find it easier to cook, easier to bake. Is there help out there? Of course, Alton’s Baking book helps, I’d also recommend “The Ratio” by Michael Rhulman (While not bullet proof, it is a good start)

Even easier, when you do cook step back and observe your overall process, not just the tasks you are doing to create food. . Look at what you are making it, what steps you take to make it and what results. Then look at the next recipe and do the same thing, comparing similarities and differences. Think about recipe history and hypothesize how else a food might have been produced.  Kitchens haven’t always been stuffed to the gills with the latest gadgets, and good food still came out of them.

Tortilla Machine
My grocery store now has a tortilla machine. This is the coolest thing ever. I did have tortillas on my shopping list and you can bet your bottom that some of these fresh ones came home with me. They’ll be part of pork mushu. yum.  We circled around the store twice and both times stopped to watch this marvelous machine. The second visit there was a little girl no taller then the machine who stood and watched transfixed what a great way for her to make a connection between flour and water made into a dough that becomes yummy tortillas.

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Cookies
I did actually manage some holiday cookies this year For a while there it looked like cookies just weren’t on the menu. What did I make? Kolochkies, Chocolate meringues and Jerilynn spice cookies. Yum.

Jeri Lynn spice cookies may seem like an odd name for a cookie but trust me they are the best. You see Jeri Lynn  spice cookies are named from the person who gave me the recipe. I have a few recipes like that Melissa’s garlic cheese biscuits is another example. What recipe of yours am I missing? What is the one can’t miss thing you make that  you think I should  be making?

And just to be kind here is the recipe for Jeri Lynn Spice Cookies

1 1/2 c butter or margerine
2 c brown sugar
1 egg
4 c sifted flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp baking soda.

preheat oven to 350.

Cream butter and brown sugar thoroughly.  Add egg and beat till light and fluffy.  sift together remaining ingredients.  stir into creamed mixture.  mix well.  chill dough till firm, about 2 hours. roll to between 1/8″ and 1/4′ thickness on well floured surface.  bake on ungreased cookie sheet 8-10 minutes.  cool 1-2 min before removing to wire rack.

The snow in Seattle has stopped and we’re left with snowpacked slushy streets.  We weren’t able to get out grocery shopping this weekend, and have so far made do with what Aron and I can carry home.  Today I found our Christmas roast at Greenwood Market. Sure it’s 2 5lb cuts instead of 1 10lb cut that I had on order from Central Market, but its still the same quality and will be fabulous on Christmas day. While Aron and are are suffering from a little bit of sticker shock.  (smaller shopping trips are always more expensive then normal shopping trips.)

Anyway, the cooking starts tonight with desserts. Would you like a peek at my menu?
Appetizers
Stuffed Mushrooms
Cheese and Crackers
Artichooke dip
Shrimp Cocktail
Bacon Wrapped Dates

Dinner
Green Salad
Tomato Bisque

Roast Beef & Gravy
Yorkshire Pudding
Green Beans with garlic

Dessert
Fruit & Chocolate Tray
Pomegranate Chocolate Torte
Trifle (Traditional)

Beverages
Sparkling Cider

We’ve made a few adjustments. The greensalad was going to have goat cheese, but I’m not paying $12 for 11 ounces of safeway goat cheese.  There was going to be wine  and picked beets, but I’ve omitted them from the final dinner.And thanks to Jilli, I’m now craving sausage cheese balls to go with, but I think we’ll do fine without.

One of the trade offs of the new student budget i have is that I’ve gone on a magazine diet. I don’t buy magazines beyond the one subscription that i hold.
Martha is wooing me though. Her newest issue has some great pictures of cookies made using cookie molds from house on the hill.

I’ve know about House on the Hill for ages. Back in the day when I worked at Kinkos we copied and collated the house on the hill catalog. Sur La Table carries a small selection of their molds on the shelf. And I bet the Gode Cookys are made with their mods too.  With an interest in medieval german cooking, having a medieval german cookie mold would make a whole lot of sense right?

See its a slipper slope Martha. I didnt need to be reminded of these nifty molds. I didnt need to be reminded how cool they were and how a couple of them would be decorative wall hangings and make the neatest christmas cookies. Cookies that i know will be a pain in the ass because they have to be molded one by one. But I want them anyway, and Martha and her pretty magazine highligting them doesnt make it any easyier to resist.

Damn you Martha Stewart.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know about the food drive, it was that I wasnt paying much attention to it.  The Elementary school that Miss Bit goes too is doing a food drive right now and the classrooms are having a contest to drive up donations.

I’m not a great person at giving donations, and here is why.

1. I’m the steward of the grocery money for 6 people.

i don’t feel right taking  money from the communal fund and buying donations for it.  That’s not the point of the household grocery budget.

If we were more united as a household financially  perhaps we’d have  a fund for charitable donations. But we don’t. (an we value our personal independence to unite our funds in such a manner.

2. I’m fussy about what I’ll donate. Sure I could have pulled a can of coconut milk out of the pantry and some soba noodles, but do people really know what to do with those?

I have a hard time with the soba noodles myself sometimes.

3. I buy in packaging that makes it unsuitable for donating. I don’t buy bags of beans and rice for the most part. I buy bulk. Bulk flour, bulk sugar, bulk beans bulk grains.  I can’t just hand over a gallon bag of black beans and expect it to be accepted.

4. I wont donate weekend cereals.

I don’t like to donate over processed foods and foods that have less nutritional value then the cardboard they are packaged in. Sure we love Count Chokula as a treat, but  it’s not something that i feel is appropriate to donate to the foodbank.

So what did we donate?

2 boxes of rice a roni, 1 bag of rice, 1 can of chickpeas, 1 box of mac and cheese.  In the end it’s something, but i really wish i could donate things of substance without having to back packaged and processed goods.

Can you smell that? Oh sorry, they’ve not invented Smell-o-net yet. (That’s probably a good thing come to think about it. ) I’ve been home working on homework most of the day and decided that I’d throw a little bit of productivity towards the kitchen. Aron and Leah are coming home after celebrating their anniversary in Seaside OR. They’ve been gone since Friday, and it will be nice to have them back.  Patrick and Miss Bit who went off to the pumpkin patch today and have spent the day frolicking with friends. (the things i have to miss because of homework) 

So I’m welcoming everyone home tonight with Roasted Garlic Soup, fresh wheat bread, and twice baked shortbread.(  Dinner will be a sausage pasta dish, but thats not cooking quite yet).  There is something magical about the aroma of a kitchen in progress. Yesterday while we were out in Portland  a friend borrowed our kitchen to do some canning, her kitchen is out of commission right now. It was amazing to come home to the spicy scent of green tomato relish permeating the kitchen.  We have a few jars she left us, and I can’t wait to figure out how to use it. (What do you do with green tomato relish?)

What a great way to end the weekend though, a warm house, good food, and family back at home.

This weeks grocery shopping trip was  preempted by car difficulty. We can’t go without our groceries so Leah made a quick trip to Cash and Carry and I placed an order online through Safeway.  Since part of the shopping had been done already, I was working with a portion of our budget and placed my order so that I was within our regular budget amount.

The order arrived today. It came about an hour and half late, though they did call and let me know.  However we did have a small problem.

They gave me too much meat. The pork loin was listed as follows.

What they delivered was 5 packages of meat, ranging from 8lbs to 10lbs.  So instead of getting the 15lbs of meat that I ordered I got 40lbs.

40 POUNDS!!!! At a $30 price difference

I called customer service and they offered a  credit, for that and a promotional code issue I had. The big question was, how do I avoid this in the future.
“Well they offer meat by the package and the weight may vary”
“By 25 lbs???”

She agreed that it was perhaps excessive, and suggested I include a note for my personal shopper next time. 
What would the note say? “Use logic?” “Don’t send enough meat to feed the neighborhood?”

What note do you think I should give the personal shopper next time?

From Blog Photos

” I won”t take a picture of your food this time.” I promised
“Good!” Aron replied
“Because the camera is out of batteries” I finished honestly

Aron does not approve of me taking pictures of his food. Especially if he’s already started eating it.  Today my camera was dead so there were no pictures of skillet fried chicken that graced my plate for lunch.
Skillet Street food is special. The trailer has 4-5 locations throughout the city and  is there one day each week. The most convienent for me is Thursday’s in Fremont. Except starting next week  I’ll be in class in Thursdays in Bothell. Tuesday as well, or else I’d go join my friend  Susan in  SODO for lunch occasionally.

So i knew today was my last chance for a while. Add to the fact that Susan promoted this week’s lunch  special : Fried Chicken. I love fried chicken. LOVE  LOVE LOVE.  I like Albertson’s fried chicken. I like KFC. I like homemade chicken.  I just have a love for chicken marinated, battered or breaded and fried. I don’t make it often as it falls into my category of pain in the ass foods.

Todays fried chicken was boneless with a cayenne kick. A side of fries and  a salad that I added to the order was too much food*. (Aron likes their burger)  Luckily Aron ate most of my fries and  my second piece of chicken. it made me happy. From being able to order ahead and pay with paypal, to the friendly staff, the skillet   is such a treat to do business with. 

Perhaps winter quarter I’ll have class on MondayWednesday, and still get my skillet fix.

*The chicken comes with bibb salad, well i wanted fries, but I also wanted to try the salad. so i ordered a salad to split with Aron.  However he was uninterested in the salad because the put dressing all over it.

It’s not all just food here at Fat and Crafty. The change to my life of leisure, I’ve picked up my projects and am actually getting stuff done.

What are the projects?

Stamping

First we have thank you gifts for Miss Bit’s teachers. I actually have an ettiquite question here. I’m making a small thank you think for each of her main teachers, and then doing something for the day care folks. Is that enough? Do I need to worry about the art teacher or gym teacher or the secretaries in the office? Anyway thus far I’ve worked on cards, and  some bookmarks

Oh and Miss Bit wants to stamp. Badly.  I may have to pick out some stuff she can do.

Knitting.

Next is the Terra Bear. After casting on at least 4-5 times, I’ve finally made some progress. So much progress in fact that I am going to be working on legs and arms shortly. I need to get some 11 dpns before I do that.An example of what he’ll look like can be found here.
This was the one skein patten from last years LYS tour, I’m considering that once i finish I should cast on for one of this years project

Weaving

Cant afford a loom, weave on a box. As part of the research I’ve done for my rigid heddle loom, I’ve purchased an issue or two of Handwoven Magazine by
Interweave press. Well in the Jan/Feb Issue they had a great tapestry bag project. (A sample can be found here)

(This project also has me thinking of weaving up some place mats, and having Miss bit try some too. A good summer activity i think.

So far I have cut the tabs into the box

and I warped up the sides.

I’ll share more as i progress Next step is to buy a sacking needle and weave the bottom while i warp the other sides.

I love pot pies. I love pasties , I love food wrapped in dough that you can eat.  Simple huh?

Hand pies were developed a couple of months ago. I came home and immediatly slipped into making dinner mode. I pulled out some chicken breasts and steamed them, cooked some ground beef , found some frozen veg, some left over veg, and made a simple dough. The beef got cooked potatoes and frozen peas and carrots, the chicken got chopped, gravy made and tossed with the leftover veg. I wrapped each filling in to dough. About a quarter cup of filling per pie.
They were a hit.

Last week I made tortillas to go with a dinner of Chicken Bacon tacos, and having a little dough left over at the end, i wrapped up two “Chicken Bacon Taco Handpies, for Leahs lunch.

Today Handpies come out again, This time in the form of Turkey Handpies for dinner. And for once, I’ll share the recipe….

But not today. It’s not ready yet. The proportions are still off and I want to offer you a couple of filling riffs before I give it to you. Oh and sandwich rolls, you totally need to know about sandwich rolls.  Maybe next week I’ll make those too…