Easter Eggs

Happy Easter!  Enjoy!

New Year, and some snow.

Keith, in his Civil War pose.

The Hosts with the Most

Me, in a funny hat.

Scenes from our rocking Scrabble NYE at Lisa and Willy's house. Everyone had a hat, except Pippa, who was in bed, and Delia, who was at Grandma's House. Lisa made us Fantabulous Beef Bourgoignon with Oven Roasted Potatoes and a salad. Willy beat everyone twice at Scrabble. At midnight we ate Vasilopitta and drank Champagne. It was most excellent.

New Year's Day we ate pork and sauerkraut with apples at Mom's house. And more cake, and some candy, and chips, and more sauerkraut, et. cetera.

Brownies

Now I am really truly in need of a New Year's Diet, but ever since I decided that I needed to eat differently, I have only made a bunch of rich, marginally unhealthy food and eaten it all, then gone back for seconds. Probably because I am cold - the temperature finally dropped below freezing here in West Virginia on January 2. Two sweaters and a hat on inside, yes that is me, and also a plate of Mexican Dark Chocolate Brownies to keep me warm. I must not recommend them, as they were way too sweet. My recipe called for unsweetened chocolate, but I only had regular old dark chocolate. Delia requested I Mexican them up by adding 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper. So I did.

In related news Keith and I bought a juice machine down at Aldi's this afternoon, it is pretty neat. We made Carrot-Apple-Cranberry juice as soon as we got home and found the thing quite easy to use and clean. I have plans to go on a New Year's Cleanse sometime soon, there is an article about it in Whole Living magazine. Also we recently learned some not-too-appetizing information about our favorite orange juice, so these things conspired to drive us to this purchase.

Yesterday Delia went back to school in spite of all the children and their Grandmothers dancing and chanting for a Snow Day. I got out of work a bit early too, as it seems nobody has much room for my sweets after the holiday bingefest. Even though it was TWENTY TWO degrees outside I still had to take the opportunity that presented itself to me and drag my asthmatic husband on a walk down by the Reservoir. We met only one lady and her dog on the trail. During a crazy beautiful snow squall I got rather turned around and unsure of where exactly I was - although only someone who can get lost in a paper bag can really get lost in White Park. I followed the five Whitetail deer in the picture below out of the blizzard and back to the main trail. What do you mean you don't see five deer in that picture? Oh, they are masters of disguise, and also I heard they can't be captured by conventional cameras. Trust me, they are there.

Herd of Deer?
Yes, I've heard of deer!

It was rather eerie walking through the park in the muffled silence a snowfall makes. The only distinct sound was that of the trees creaking over our heads in the wind. We spotted a mysterious tire track in the snow, it was about 3 inches wide with deep treads. Too wide for a bicycle, but there was only one track so it couldn't have been the cart the BoPark guys drive around... Keith thinks it might have been a dirt bike. It is an unsolved mystery.

My new/old coat kept me plenty warm in the winter weather.

Vasilopita

In honor of Serafina's Greek ancestors, I decided to bake a Vasilopita (or Saint Basil's Cake) to take to our New Year's Eve dinner at Lisa and Willy's house. I found a couple of different recipes but settled on this one, mostly so I had an excuse to buy a bottle of brandy. :)

I had to look up brandy on the internet, because I didn't know what kind to tell Keith to get at the store. So I learned something new...

"The origins of brandy are clearly tied to the development of distillation. Concentrated alcoholic beverages were known in ancient Greece and Rome. Brandy, as it is known today, first began to appear in the 12th century and became generally popular in the 14th century.

Initially wine was distilled as a preservation method and as a way to make the wine easier for merchants to transport. It was also thought that wine was originally distilled to lessen the tax which was assessed by volume. The intent was to add the water removed by distillation back to the brandy shortly before consumption. It was discovered that after having been stored in wooden casks, the resulting product had improved over the original distilled spirit.^[3] In addition to removing water, the distillation process leads to the formation and decomposition of numerous aroma compounds, fundamentally altering the composition of the distillate from its source. Non-volatile substances such as pigments, sugars, and salts remain behind in the still. As a result, the taste of the distillate may be quite unlike that of the original source. -from Wikipedia

Also according to the internet, Greek families cut this cake at midnight on New Year's Eve, or sometime on New Year's Day, or whenever they get together with their loved ones after Christmas and before Epiphany. The whole thing is sliced up and then the pieces are handed out, starting with the eldest person present and going on down the line to the youngest. Someone gets a slice with a coin inside, and that person will have extra special good luck in the coming year.

Keith and I had a long discussion about baking a coin into the cake. He didn't feel good about the idea, what if somebody swallowed it? I disagreed, but lack of a celebratory coin only got me thinking about my other options. In lieu of a coin I thought a piece of candy slipped into the cake from the bottom (after it was baked and cool) would do nicely, and since I have an extra pound of caramel in my fridge from our holiday candymaking, that's what I decided.

Ours went into the oven with nary a photo snapped in process. Why? Because Santa brought me a little radio that I can plug my spacephone into and listen to Pandora while I cook. And my phone is also my camera. So it stayed on the counter and played 3 Leg Torso radio to Keith and me while we beat the crap out of some eggs.

I love love love cooking with my husband. He is on the culinary adventure with me, not just carrying the heavy stuff for me. It doesn't hurt that he is strong and patient, since we don't have a Kitchenaid. He and I took turns zesting oranges, beating egg yolks, and whipping egg whites till soft peaks formed.

My cakes cracked a bit across the top, like a cornbread does, and so weren't particularly fit for the traditional dusting of powdered sugar/stencil of the new year date that I had planned, as seen here. Instead I whipped up a glaze for the top.

Caramel Brandy Glaze

• In a small saucepan combine 1/4 cup of caramels, 1/4 cup brandy and the juice of half an orange, and a teaspoon of butter.
• stir over low heat till caramels are melted and sauce is blended.
• pour over the top of the cake!

And so it was Christmas

Christmas Eve I was at work before the sun came up. Of course, I am always at work before the sun comes up. My boss was drinking a Coke in a classic glass bottle, and you know, that's pretty special since you don't see it very often.
"It is Mexican Coke." she says. "It's made with-"
"Real sugar. I know, it was my Dad's favorite."
And so after that I had to go sit in the bathroom and ball my eyes out at pretty much thirty minute intervals till I finished baking all the Cookies and Christmas Bread. Don't get me wrong, I still like Christmas. But when Elvis sang "Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree/ won't be the same Dear, if you're not here with me," it meant something different this year...
Then I walked home, in the not quite cold air, and it didn't really feel like Christmas at all. I got myself together and decided not to cry anymore, because it would just bum everybody out and I didn't want to do that to them on Christmas, you know?

The first thing Husband said to me when I walked in, as cheerful as always, was "So how was work, baby?" Of course I just threw myself into his arms and sobbed something about Mexican Coke, and he just held me like he's so good at doing. No heavy sigh emanating from his lips to let me know how unfortunate it was that I was ruining Christmas, just that strong hug and the familiar "I know, baby." Because he does, he knows about the unopened bottles of Coke in my parent's basement that my Dad was saving, and he knows how much I miss my Dad. And then I just had to sob even harder, because it hit me real hard how it might be to go on living without him, and that my Mom was living in a world like that. This great bleak panorama of all the women in my family history outliving their husbands played out behind my watery eyes, and it was humbling and terrifying all at the same time.
A girl can only cry for so long, and trust me, I've been crying semi-professionally for my entire life. When the tears were about dry I ran upstairs to hop in the shower and get ready for the big Christmas Eve Dinner at my Mother-In-Law's house. There was something really healing about the quality of light in my giant southern-facing bathroom. I don't get to take a shower at noon very often, but the sun shines full into my bathroom through layers of sheer curtains and the draping pothos vines and citrus trees I have in front of the windows. The combination of that soft, bright natural light with the steamy shower helped me rinse all my tears and worries down the drain. The nap I took after that helped a lot too. By gosh and golly, at 3 PM we were all ready to go down to Clarksburg and have some good Christmas fun with Keith's family. My Mom went to Seester's house this year, so we didn't get together at Sun Valley. Which might have been just as well, me being an unstable snot/tear factory and all...

Dinner at Grandma Virginia's house was Absolutely Lovely. Constance baked a wonderful turkey and scalloped potatoes, and macaroni and cheese, and stuffing. There were also deviled eggs made by Grandma Virginia - and instead of being sliced long ways they were sliced the other way and they were super cute and delicious and I think Delia ate half a dozen of them. I whipped up some gravy when I got there, FROM SCRATCH, with a can of beef broth that Grandma had under the cupboard. There was not a speck of green vegetable in the house, much to Delia's delight.
After dinner, and after Grandma's Galettes, we opened presents, and everyone was delighted. Constance gave us, among other lovely things, a real boss coffee maker that has a water filter and timer and a couple of other bells and whistles that are sweet. The girls all got cute PJs and sweaters and makeup and perfume and were happy as clams. I kind of felt bad that I didn't get presents knitted for Becca and Schyler, but they can place requests and I will make them something in the future.

Of course I didn't take enough pictures in North View, in fact, the only one I got at Grandma Virginia's house was this one of my niece Kaitlynn in the present I made her! The hat is Leethal's Short-rows Wavy Hat and the scarf is Karen Baumer's Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf. Both are knit in Bernat Mosaic, Psychedelic colorway, a 100% acrylic self striping yarn that I picked up at AC Moore in Bridgeport. Both were knit on size 8 Clover Bamboo needles.

She is just the cutest thing.

After Ryan and Deb and the girls took off in their sleigh to go visit Deb's fam, Keith and Delia and I wandered next door to Grandpa Carson's house.

My sweet girl in front of Grandpa's Christmas Tree.

They say Christmas is for the children (well, at least Barry Manilow says it!) and you know, Madyson was the star of the party at this house. She had plenty of packages to open - but she got a little sidetracked after the first one, which was a shopping cart. She pushed that little thing all over the house and wouldn't sit down to open another thing! During this time Delia decided that she was going to buy herself a viola with her Christmas money. My girl has priorities.

Grandpa Carson and Cathy got this awesome slide for Maddy, and she LOVED IT! I think she slid down it a hundred times.

Grandpa helped her climb, and Uncle Keith caught her.

It was super fun. I must have taken 30 pictures, but most of them were of a blurry Maddy in mid slide. Blurry is in this Christmas I hear.

Keith, Delia and I made it back to Edgehill House before midnight this year! Once my sugarplum was tucked into her bed, the Elves got to work Elving, and we had a nice quiet little time waiting up for Santa with The Twelve Beers Of Christmas, courtesy of Keith's bosses.

Christmas morning came early, Delia woke us at 7:30 and we enjoyed coffee from our new coffee pot and bacon & eggs while we opened gifts. I am ever so thankful to have this little family.

Bread for Thanksgiving

You know I work at a bakery, and yet I didn't get any bread to serve to my guests for the Big Thursday meal. A little shortsighted, right? Things get away from me, work is often just work and not as special to me as it is to someone coming into the shop to get a nice handmade loaf of awesome bread. So this morning when I realized that we were quite breadless, I looked about for a recipe I could make for dinner. After toying with the idea of making brioche rolls, and then moving away from that due to time constraints, I stumbled onto this one from the King Arthur Flour website. I like for my dinner rolls to be made with eggs and milk and butter, not the lean kind we have at the Bakery. I also had a beautiful butternut squash sitting around wanting me to use it for something. When I got up at 8, the kitchen was cold and the oven wanted me to turn it on. So I roasted that squash, and used it to make the dinner rolls. It was a big squash, and there are a lot of people coming over for dinner, so I doubled the recipe. And then I messed around with it some more.

Start with a big roasted squash, mine was about 3 cups worth. Puree. Or not, I don't really think it maters much, especially if you roasted it really well.

Dissolve 4 packets of instant yeast in a cup of warm water. Not hot water. There are instructions about this sort of thing on the yeast packet. I actually used one pack of quick rising, 2 packets of active dry, and one chunk of fresh yeast. So I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference what kind you use. Just know that if you have fresh yeast you will have to use more of it by volume than you would the granulated stuff. Also, King Arthur has a good article on yeast, worth reading if you do this sort of thing a lot.

Ok, in a big ol' mixing bowl I combined the squash, a cup of milk, about 1/3 cup of apple cider, 4 beaten eggs, about half a cup of honey, 2 tablespoons of butter cut up into little pieces, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 4 teaspoons of salt (if you use kosher salt like I did, use more, maybe twice as much. I wish I had) and oh yeah, I put in a little bit of levain from the bakery, which I just happened to have hanging out. I wouldn't go to the trouble of making a whole sourdough starter just for this dough, but I love my levain - you could call it my secret ingredient. Then mix in the yeast & water.

In another bowl measure out 6 cups of flour. I almost always go by weight when I am making bread, but I was in a rush on the fly and so I didn't. Beat this into the wet mixture with a spoon (or paddle attachment), it will be soupy, for about 2 minutes. I also added about a cup of our West Virginia Wheat flour for texture, and next time I will add more because I really like how those whole wheat berries look and taste.

Measure out 6 more cups of flour, I used a combination of white and whole wheat. Add that to the dough and change to a dough hook if you are using a mixer. If you are making this "unplugged" be prepared to stir and knead and then keep on doing that for half an hour or so. I took this down to the bakery and did it in the Hobart stand mixer and it only took about 4 minutes. This much dough wouldn't fit in a Kitchen-Aid mixer anyway.

Mix it till it is smooth and elastic, adding more flour if necessary as you go along. When it passes the windowpane test, turn it into a greased bowl and let it rise till doubled.

I weighed this out into 2 oz portions and baked the rolls in a well greased muffin tin. Baked it in with the TURKEY at about 375 for about 10 minutes. When the internal temperature reaches 190, they're done. Brush the tops of the hot rolls with melted butter, or do like I did and just use the stick of butter to swipe the tops. It made 24 rolls and I still have more than half of the dough in the fridge. Might make it into sweet rolls for breakfast tomorrow.

Caramel Heart Cookies

No, they don't look like hearts, but they do have hearts. Melted inside each cookie is a chunk of homemade caramel. We made several pounds of the stuff back at Christmastime, and it keeps well in the freezer. I sliced it into portions, wrapped it in buttered foil and then in a plastic bag, and we just take out a piece whenever we're feeling saucy.

We used this recipe for sugar cookies but halved it. Mostly. We didn't halve the egg. I eyeballed the flour. I wrapped a heaping teaspoon of dough around a little cube of caramel - probably the equivalent of half a cube of the kind you get in the store wrapped in plastic. They baked at 375 for ten minutes. I let them cool for about 5 minutes on the sheet before I moved them to the cooling rack. I recommend using a metal spatula with a thin blade because when I used my plastic pancake turner I ripped the bottom off the cookie and all the caramel oozed out.

The cookies suffered a little denting in the center as they cooled. If we'd had any on hand I would have plopped a Hershey's Kiss right in the middle of each one and let it melt down into that divot. As it stands, they are not chocolatey, but they are GOOD.

The first batch is plain on the outside, the second was rolled in red sugar at Delia's insistence. I think they came out really cute!

Some Christmas Cheer

My mom requested some pictures of our tree, and I have to say that it really isn't that photogenic, but these are for her. It is a white pine, and it is awfully fuzzy, and of course, huge. Some of the lights have already shorted out (who knew leds could short out? Jeesh.) and I can't get them to come back on, so that's sort of a bummer, but it is a metaphor for our lives here at Edgehill House.
We spent the evening baking cookies and dancing around the kitchen. It was awesome! We forgot to buy corn syrup at the store, so we had to change our plans a little bit when we got home (Christmas must be truly magical to get me to willingly consume CORN SYRUP!) but Chocolate Chip Cookies always make everyone here happy.





Here is a playlist I made of some super fun dancey Christmas Music. I hope you enjoy it.

Oh Spring!

At last...

We've made it through the winter, and tomorrow the sun shines full on the equator and day and night will balance there, equal. From here the Sun marches toward his full power and the days outstrip the nights in length. My powers wax along with the sun's rays. I will be myself again by May Day. Sweet Glorious life giving Sun, how I have missed you!

The Vernal Equinox, also known in some circles as Ostara or Eostre, is all about the magic of new life and rebirth. I don't have to tell you that the bunnies and the eggs and the chocolate (well, maybe not the chocolate... did the Celts or Romans have chocolate?) that we see in the one dollar aisle at Target are all "appropriated" from really old pagan festivities (I bet that ancient indigenous southern hemisphere people had vernal equinox rituals that involved chocolate), and even the moniker Easter comes from the Saxon Goddess Eostra. Eostra had hares for her companions, and bunnies also are famous for their romantic antics. So this time of year is a really great time to do what bunnies do, if you know what I mean (wink, wink, nudge nudge). And of course start planting your crops and all that happy agrarian stuff. It's a fertility festival folks, enjoy it! Also, set something on fire if you can. Maybe a couch... I hear that WVU is doing well in the basketball playoffs.



My favorite seasonal myth is Hellenic in origin. Spring is when Persephone got to come back from Hell and hang out again for six months with her mom Demeter. I have always identified strongly with Persephone, maybe because I have Seasonal Affect Disorder real bad, I dunno, I feel like I am in Hell for most of the winter.

Here at Edgehill House we are celebrating by planning our Urban Garden, more to come on that later. I also plan to squeeze some time in this weekend for a little Ukranian Egg making - anybody who wants to join can totally get in on this action. I have plenty of psyanky to go around. All you need is an egg and an idea.

Happy Spring everybody!

Imbolc 2010

January has thankfully fallen away behind me, and just to make sure it's taken all my bad waves with it, I am going to (metaphorically, unless I can find my cast iron cauldron in the next 20 minutes) tear it's page off the calendar and burn it. Fire is cleansing, and Sweet Buttery* Gods, my spirit is in need of a good cleanse right now.

*The Irish origins of this holiday have quite a bit to do with lambs being born. New butter was a precious and welcome gift once the ewes started lactating with the birth of their lambs. Hence my newly minted swear.

Besides setting things on fire, the main way I celebrate this holiday is by cleaning my house. (How weird is that, right? I bet you thought I'd be making corn dollies or dedicating an altar to Brigid or something like that. All well and good, but so much work. It is amazing the things a girl can pick up in 20 years of indiscriminately reading books put put by Llewelleyn and Sam Weiser.) Thank you Big Lots, for providing me with a new Shark Steam Mop at %20 off, I love you. Thank you Keith, for going out and buying Dawn because the Palmolive I bought at Big Lots was actually for the Dishwasher, not the Sink. Thank you Delia, for playing Wii and ignoring me while I threw away a whole garbage bag full of ruined, outgrown clothes and worthless toys that were in the way. Thank you Cats, for letting me clean your litterboxes and not immediately crapping in them. I feel much better now.

February 2 is Groundhog Day. I hope everyone is as excited as I am to see what Punxutawney Phil prognosticates. I am hoping for 6 more weeks of winter. Wait, no I'm not! No matter what Phil divines from the light outside his hidey-hole, winter won't technically end till the Spring Equinox. And then there will be dancing....