Knowing My Limits

Yesterday, I received a fat envelope in the mail with photos from our vacation, all ready to be preserved for posterity.

I imagine that I could be a pretty good scrapbooker. I like doing graphic design-type things, I have a penchant for pretty paper, and I can be crafty if I put my mind to it. I think I would like accumulating all of those fanciful sticker-things, hole-puncher gadgets, and acid-free pens in all colors of the rainbow. I certainly enjoy the end product.

There’s just one problem: I really hate being behind.

Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but it seems to me that scrapbooking is an exercise of endless catching up. There’s nothing you can do ahead of time because you have to see how the pictures turn out. I just couldn’t deal with that.

So, this weekend, I’m putting my photos into a regular photo album. Maybe it’s not as glamorous or whimsical as a scrapbook, but I can stay on top of the flow of pictures much more easily. Plus, I like the fact that people sit through my commentary since I don’t write convenient captions in the margins. I do, however, fire up my handy-dandy label-maker to make labels for whole events. I can’t go completely without gadgets, can I?

An Oldie, but Goodie

Those leftover marshmallows were annoying me. They’d been sitting by the microwave for months, holdovers from the chocolate fountain dipping bonanza at our New Year’s Eve party. Marshmallows don’t go bad, right? I didn’t know what to do with them, other than make s’mores, but it’s hardly campfire season. And then I bought a box of Rice Krispies. Oh, yeah.

It had been way too long since I made Rice Krispie treats and I can’t let myself forget their high ease-to-yumminess ratio. I watched the marshmallows melt into the yellow puddle of melted butter and suddenly, I was back in my parents’ kitchen. I was wearing a striped apron with sundry kitchen utensils poking out of the top of a big front pocket, standing on a footstool, and dumping cupfuls of Rice Krispies that my mother had measured into the mixture of butter and marshmallow. This time around, my arm ached a little as I folded in the cereal and I regarded it fondly, remembering how I never could incorporate it fully. Mom always had to finish it up for me. Then, we’d push it into a baking dish and it was cruel punishment to wait until it was solid enough to cut into bars. Why not just eat it gooey and warm, straight out of the pot? I would pull at the stubborn, stuck clusters of puffed rice on the side of the pot, stretching marshmallow strings until they gave way and that sweetened clump was all mine.

In preparation for baking cupcakes earlier in the week, I had inadvertently bought a package of no less than seventy-five valentine-themed cupcake wrappers (who needs that many?!). The stack of remaining cups inspired a stroke of genius around this particular project, if I do say so myself. Why make regular Rice Krispie treats when you can make cupcake ones? I lined a muffin tin with a dozen cupcake wrappers and used soup spoons to drop in chunky dollops. I topped them off with red, white, and pink sprinkles, which made for quite festive Rice Krispie treats. My co-workers were very pleased and not one of the snacks came home with me at the end of the day.

Fortunately, I had enough leftover “batter” to fill up two mini loaf pans, so now we have own stash at home. JG was also very pleased.

Sunday Goodness

“How do you feel about pancakes this morning?”

JG wanted pancakes, partially because we had a carton of buttermilk in the fridge. I agreed enthusiastically and he got to work, mixing up batter and heating up a griddle. We usually cheat our way past buying buttermilk (mixing a tablespoon of vinegar for every cup of milk) and it usually works, but lately, we’ve had a rash of runny, floppy, pancakes of disappointment. Having the buttermilk around gave us the first opportunity to actually follow the recipe.

“Your pancakes are almost ready,” JG called from the kitchen. “I think these are the best ones I’ve ever made.”

Well! This should be good.

I sat down at the table with a glass of orange juice and JG set down a plate stacked with four fluffy, steaming pancakes. “Ooh,” I breathed. The aroma alone indicated superior pancakes and I inhaled deeply. Following my usual procedure, I buttered between each layer and then spangled maple syrup over the whole stack. I’m a minimalist when it comes to syrup. I cut a wedge out of the quivering tower and steam wafted up. I admired the distinct strata of golden-brown-deliciousness, glistening butter, and gooey syrup. I speared the top two layers for my first bite. Each piece had absorbed a touch of butter and sweet syrup, but not too much so that the cake itself was overwhelmed. Puffy enough for a good bite but tender so as to melt in one’s mouth, the pancake was exactly the right answer on a Sunday morning.

“So, how is it?” he asked.

Oh, my.

“I think we should buy buttermilk from now on.”

Sunday Scribblings #46: Yummy

Power Puff Girls

My checklist for our Super Bowl party:

• Steaming slow cookers of chili
  
• Baked potatoes
  
• Cheese and sour cream
  
• Chips and salsa
  
• Veggies and dip
• Giant cookies
  
• Puff-painted “I Heart Peyton” t-shirt
  

That’s right. Puff paint. Peyton. It was a fabulous combination.

Let me explain that I don’t know that much about professional football. I like watching college football, but to me, the professional version seems to have a lot of bells and whistles, plus a generous smattering of illegal and distasteful shenanigans going on, like with the Minnesota Vikings, for example. It’s safe to say that I can’t match the teams to their states with the exception of maybe three lucky teams. (I mean, which Carolina gets to claim the Panthers? It’s like saying something is from Dakota.) When Super Bowl comes around every year, it’s more an excuse to get together with friends than a serious sporting event for me. And I do enjoy a good commercial.

I really enjoy a commercial with Peyton Manning, especially the one when he puts accountants on his fantasy team. Ha. I like that he hasn’t been arrested. I enjoyed his tango in an 8th grade musical. I saw an endearing interview with his mom before the Colts-Giants game and she was so cute! And there we have my main reasons for liking Peyton even though I have no clue about the rest of the Colts. There was no better way to express this affection than with a puff-painted t-shirt.

Fortunately, I had an accomplice in this operation in a friend who was coming for our Super Bowl party. She loves Peyton with fervor approximating my own and also enjoys a good puff-painting session. Last Friday, during a game of Monopoly, I said jokingly, “I thought about doing this to surprise you, but would it have been scary or pathetic if I puff-painted Peyton t-shirts for us?”

She whipped her head around. “No! Let’s do it tomorrow!”

“Yes!”

And so we did. Hunched over my kitchen table, we dressed up plain black t-shirts with sparkly puff paint in lopsided letters, footballs, horseshoes, tufts of grass, and lucky #18. JG noticed a strange lack of conversation between the two of us and remarked, “This is serious business, huh? No small talk, even. Wow.”

That’s right. The shirts were amazing. One of the other girls at our party took one look at the two of us and simply said, “Oh. My.” How about that for admiration?

Now that I’m no longer nine years old, jittery from soda at a slumber party, or lacking fine motor skills, I’m actually kind of good at puff-painting. If this skill were even slightly profitable I might try doing it more often. And look – the Colts won! That is what puff paint can do.

It's Crunch Time

There are two dry-erase boards in the kitchen: one is just for grocery store items and a larger one is for working out math problems (JG) or compulsive list-making (me). I derive great satisfaction from swiping my thumb across a task with a ringing “Done!” in my ears and a list of to-do’s that looks that much emptier.

Today calls for a Big List. We’ve jotted down all of the things we need to do before my family descends upon our house on Christmas Day and even though it’s not as bad as it could be, it’s still a little intimidating. It’s the last push, the final cram session! Thankfully, the majority of my list is baking. Between my family’s expectations and my church’s Christmas Eve festivities, I committed to quite a bit. By Sunday afternoon, I will have produced:

• 8 dozen cookies (3 varieties)
• 4 dozen brownies
• A pumpkin cheesecake
• A loaf of bread

Aside from a clean house and piles of baked goods, I’m looking forward to a prize at the end of it all. JG had the forethought to add “snuggle during a movie” to the list, so that’ll be a nice reward to successfully erasing off things during the day.

Here we go…

False Advertising

Last week, while celebrating JG’s birthday, I encountered a ridiculous product that I won’t ever use again. It’s a public service announcement, really.

After we ate our Chinese takeout and JG opened his presents, I set off to frost the cake. I have zero cake-decorating experience, so when I was at the grocery store picking up supplies, I spied something called Easy Squeeze Decorating Icing. Ooh, you just screw on one of their handy decorating tips and off you go! I bought a tube of white and blue (flavors unknown, I guess) and I was all set. I wasn’t worried that I had left the actual decorating to the day of because, really, how long was it going to take? My plan was to write, “Happy Birthday” in white, do a nice thick, scrolly border in blue, and then I’d make random white flecks across the border to satisfy the “lots of frosting” request from JG. Simple enough, I thought:

Okay, so the writing should be narrow. Here’s the smallest tip. Threading it on was easy enough. So, I’ll just squeeze it out and write out the words. Maybe in cursive? That would be fancy. Man, I’m squeezing really hard and nothing is happening. Oh, I see, I have to squeeze hard enough to get the tip to fill up with icing, too. Okay. Good, here’s the icing coming out! Now, I can start my letters!

What the heck?! Why isn’t the icing sticking to the cookie?! I guess I need to apply more pressure, but my hand is already killing me and the cake only says, “Hap”. That’s not even a word! Maybe the narrow tip is the hardest one to squeeze. I’ll try the biggest one for a little bit. … Oops, I can only fit “Bday” in with this one. Argh! It’s still not sticking! Whatever, I’ll just pick up the “y” and put it in place. There.

I’m sure it’ll be easier to do the border, so let me break into the blue. Okay, and I’m using the second biggest tip… Here we go. What is the blue stuff leaking out?! Agh, it’s all over me. No, not on the cookie…! Too late. I’ll dab that off with a paper towel. All right, let’s give this a try. I’ve seen people make those little wavy humps to make a pattern, so maybe I can do that. More leakage! What in the world! And the more I squeeze, the more it leaks! But my hand really hurts. This isn’t working. I hate this stuff!

I ended up flipping the tube of icing over, slashing it open with my kitchen shears, and glopping the icing along the cake’s edge with a butter knife. But then I studded it with extra chocolate chips because I’m classy like that. An hour after I began, I presented the mangled thing with aching hands. JG liked the end result, but I felt like the whole thing was mocking me. Stupid icing. Unless your day job consists of testing those tension dolls with pop-out eyes, those ridiculous tubes are not easy to squeeze. I shake my fist at you, Easy Squeeze Decorating Icing! Never again!

Butterdoodles

“Try this,” I commanded, sticking a cookie in front of JG’s nose. I had detected an error in my execution and wanted to see if the batch was salvageable. It was Sunday and fairly late in the evening for making cookies.

He took a bite. “Um, I think it’s fine. What’s wrong?”
“An extra stick of butter! I forgot that a stick was a half cup, and I used an extra stick of butter!”
“Well, it’s moist, all right.”

My office has an annual cookie swap for the holidays and I thought it would be nice to send a batch of snickerdoodles, my swapping cookie of choice, to our headquarters in San Francisco. This crepe-like batch was supposed to be for my co-workers out west and I could not send them the fat-laden cookies with a clear conscience. I tipped the unbaked balls of dough into the trash, along with the cookies that had spread from their own continental drift. I had baked Pangaea on my hands, extra-fatty.

“I am such a baking failure this weekend,” I complained dramatically.
“That is so not true. Two out of the three things you baked this weekend came out right.”

Okay, fine. It had been a highly domesticated weekend for me and it wasn’t all bad. I made another loaf of no-knead bread (now informally dubbed “weekend bread” at our house) that came out all crusty and wonderful; it sacrificed itself to give us top-notch grilled cheese sandwiches yesterday. I also experimented with miniature pumpkin cheesecakes intended for my family at Christmas. I’m pretty good at regular-sized cheesecake and individual portions of anything can be so darn cute, so I couldn’t resist. They ended up quite tasty, but I just don’t think cheesecake is a finger food. JG and I peeled off the cupcake wrappers and weren’t sure what to do with it. Just shove it in your mouth? It seemed rather coarse for what I had thought would have been a dainty finger food. What was the point of mini cheesecake if you have to get a fork to eat it? I may as well just make the normal big cheesecake since I know what I’m doing.

Then the buttery snickerdoodles. I was irritated primarily because I’ve made those cookies since nursery school, rolling the balls of dough with my mom at the kitchen island. Shouldn’t I know how to make them by now? I love watching the cookies rise up into little cinnamony hemispheres and then crumple back up later on, giving the impression of a perpetually furrowed brow. Baking is a mysterious alchemy to me; you start with humble ingredients and end up with something totally different and delicious from the properties of gluten and protein. JG chuckles at me crouching, entranced, in front of the oven door. But this time, I had to wash a sinkful of dishes, an additional source of annoyance, for cookies that ended up unbaked and in the trash can.

That’s how, today, I ended up making my third batch of cookies in three days. I shipped out yesterday’s batch out to San Francisco and tonight’s four dozen are packed up for the cookie swap on Thursday. Tomorrow holds yet another workout for my mixer, but making JG’s chocolate chip cookie birthday cake should be fun. If nothing else, I look forward to an adventure with frosting...

Practice Christmas

On Saturday, we had a practice Christmas dinner. I try to practice whatever I’m about to do whenever possible. I walked through my route around campus the day before my freshman classes started. I had a wedding rehearsal, and thank goodness for that. This particular dry run was motivated by the fact that I am paranoid about trying new recipes with company, and even more so when that company includes a mother who cooks everything from scratch and a grandmother who has high expectations of a Christmas celebration that has the gall to located somewhere other than her house. Oh, boy.

Together, JG and I made an approximately two-person-sized version of Christmas dinner and I was pleasantly surprised that we did it with very little slamming into each other or usurping kitchen equipment that the other wanted. We ended up very full of yummy London broil, garlic mashed potatoes, and green beans with pancetta. Half of my satisfaction was derived from simply reporting to my mother that my practice run went well, so ha! Let’s hear it for no disasters!

Oh, wait. There was a disaster, but not with the food. Saturday also included the ritual of Cutting Down the Tree and I don’t think it can be Christmas without an amusing tree story. This one balances out the wild success of the dinner dry run, I’m afraid.

Around mid-morning, JG and I went to a local Christmas tree farm to find The One with the trusty bow saw in hand. JG got it for his birthday last year for this express purpose. At least we weren’t the weirdos wearing Santa hats or the psychos with the chainsaw.

We eventually found the tree, and after JG posed for the mandatory picture of him brandishing the saw at it, he cut it down and we made our way to the parking lot. I was carrying the little end of the tree in the back of the operation, so I couldn’t see where I was going at all. Suddenly, in front of Mr. Santa Hat and Son, I felt my ankle give way in a little hollow in the ground, and I thought, “Oh, no! The tree! Who cares about the tree?! Am I falling in mud here?” And down I went. Fortunately, the tree and I made it home in one piece, and JG proceeded to put it in the stand with very little trouble. We gloried in our good fortune and proceeded to lace it up with lights and ornaments galore.

Just before heading to bed, we heard a soft whooshing sound. JG and I turned to watch the tree crash down and hear that faint burble of the tree stand pouring itself onto the carpet. I stood paralyzed while JG ran over and yelled, “Grab the presents!” I rescued the boxes wrapped solely for the purpose of having something under the tree once we got it decorated and we began the sad process of recovering the tree. Ornaments were scattered around the living room – amazingly, none broke in the fall – the tree had to be re-positioned in its stand, and we tried to soak up the big water spot on the floor. After spending however many hours putting the whole thing together, it was very demoralizing to start over, especially since we had no idea what made the tree fall down after six hours of successful standing. I only just recovered and finished redecorating the tree tonight and I think it looks pretty good. It’s a little crooked, but it hasn’t fallen down in three days, so I think we’ll take what we can get at this point.

Bread Failure No More

I’d read all about Jim Lahey's famed No-Knead Bread and ogled pictures of a recipe said to be fool-proof – the answer to everyone’s bread woes! Say goodbye to finicky yeast and that rising and punching down business, they said. I love to bake, but bread kind of scared me. This seemed like a nice challenge, so I ran out to get myself some rapid-rise yeast and set to work.

Not once, but twice, I managed to make myself some no-knead bread…soup. When I got to Step 2 and tried to fold my dough, it was like trying to fold oatmeal. It spilled all over my board and brief, panicked images of The Blob ran through my head. I sadly poured my so-called dough down the drain and then I felt a little sadder because I was able to pour it. It doesn’t feel good to be the fool against whom a recipe should be proof.

Downcast, I wrote an e-mail to Deb and Luisa in case they had time to troubleshoot my bread-making woes. Because they are lovely people (or perhaps because my plight was that pitiful), they both commiserated with me sympathetically and had two collective suggestions: try incorporating bread flour and add water gradually, even if I didn’t add the full listed amount.

I got myself some bread flour and waited until this weekend to try out the suggestions. I used half all-purpose flour and half bread flour, tentatively added water to the dry goods, and lo and behold! Dough! Shaggy and sticky, just like the recipe said! I gave a little whoop and stopped myself from compulsively adding the rest of the water, even though it makes my eye twitch a little bit to mess with baking recipes. I think it’s the chemistry person in me.

Twenty hours later, I pulled out my hand-me-down Corningware casserole dish from the oven containing a squat, square-ish loaf of bread. The bread made pleasant but unnerving popping noises as it cooled and when tapped, the crust echoed with a nice hollow sound. After letting it cool for a while (“I can hold it now; can I cut it?”), JG busted into it with the bread knife. He slathered his chunk with butter and pronounced it good. The request came quickly for two, no, three loaves to be baked for Christmas. I raised an eyebrow and crunched into my own piece of yummy bread. I did a little victory dance in the kitchen – success!

Turkey Breast Surgery

Tomorrow is the Thanksgiving pot luck lunch at my office and I’m in charge of the turkey. I don’t pretend to possess any degree of turkey prowess – I’m more of a baker, really – but last year, I managed to cook a turkey breast successfully in my handy dandy crock pot. I offered to make a pumpkin cheesecake this year and let someone else handle the main attraction, but there weren’t any volunteers to take that on, much to no one’s surprise. So I shrugged and added turkey breast to my grocery list this week.

I planned on prepping the whole thing tonight so that I could switch on the crock pot when I got up in the morning. The meat had to cook for 6 hours, so that would work just fine for lunchtime. The recipe I consulted in my Fix It and Forget It cookbook assured me that I didn’t have to thaw out the turkey, so I lugged the stone-like mass out of my freezer and klonked it into the serving dish of my crock pot. However, when I busted through the wrapper, I discovered that there was a blasted gravy packet frozen to the meat. Argh. I grabbed the nearby kitchen shears to chip away at the ice surrounding the gravy packet when I realized that there were three major factors preventing my extraction. The gravy packet was four times larger than I anticipated, its contents were frozen and rigid, and worst of all, due to its curved shape, the frozen-solid turkey breast had a death grip on the stupid thing. As I came to this soggy conclusion, I accidentally punctured the packet with my shears and gravy slush came seeping out.

Lord, what a mess.

I ran the whole thing under the coldest water my faucet could produce in an effort to safely melt the ice surrounding the gravy packet. Unfortunately, this plan didn’t exactly work and rendered me with hands that were frozen stiff and completely numb. I gritted my teeth as I attempted to pry the turkey breast from the gravy – “Come on, you know you want to!” – but to no avail.

JG arrived home to find me practically sobbing into the sink with frozen hands clasped around the rebellious hunk of poultry. Upon quick examination, he said, “I’ll fix it,” and he did! He simply cut open the gravy packet, drained it out, and slipped it out of its prison. Why couldn’t I have thought of that? Maybe because I had crossed the line of logical reasoning when I couldn’t feel my hands and the idea of being beaten into submission by the white meat of a dumb animal was too much for me to handle.

I managed to finish up without a fiasco, thank goodness. It’s one thing to be bamboozled by the meat, but it’s quite another to be outsmarted by onion, celery, and chicken stock. I just hope the turkey turns out well tomorrow.

Edited: November 16
The turkey turned out just fine! It was too bad that I had no idea how to carve the thing and butchered it, but no one knew the difference.

Best of Intentions

I am really good at making personal goals, if I do say so myself, and not just for the New Year. On a fairly regular basis, I mentally mash together a ball of things I’d like to start or stop, and it just rolls around my head until the superfluous ones fall off and I’m left with the things that are pretty necessary to life (go for oil changes regularly) and/or just plain common sense (get the heck out of bed when the alarm goes off). You’ll notice that I didn’t say that I am good at reaching personal goals, so I get very excited when I manage to accomplish something in which I am not naturally skilled.

The items that have repeatedly fallen off the ball o’ goals are many and varied. I’m on my third time trying to learn how to play the guitar. I’ve never really stopped biting my fingernails. My mail-filing system has broken down to a pile of envelopes with a mishmash of post-its sticking out to remind me of something. My exercise routine hasn’t been as consistent as I’d like it to be, thanks to a few hellish weeks at work, but hey – there’s no time to re-start like the present. And by “the present”, of course, I mean “tomorrow”, because my current attempt at a regimen doesn’t include weekends.

There is one goal that I am bound and determined to get out of the way, and I am dedicating today and the rest of this week to that end. I am going to knit scarves for the seniors on the girls’ volleyball team that JG is coaching at the high school where he teaches. I made this claim before the team was determined, without knowing how many seniors there would be or even how long the season would last. Well. There are three seniors, Senior Night is a week from tomorrow, and I have all of 1.1 scarves completed. This is not good.

The plan for today is to hunker down on the couch and knit for the rest of the night. Oh, I’ll take a break to make dinner and eat, but while JG watches his normal Sunday TV lineup, the twitching, clicking bump next to him will be me, knitting. Any time this week that I would normally spend reading or browsing up ways to spend my online gift cards will, instead, be spent in the sweatshop of my own making, driven by the intent to start a tradition and attain the level of supercool coach’s wife. Even if my intentions aren’t entirely pure, at least they’ll be fulfilled.