Bitch Feast

The world of culinary art has been unkind to me. There is nobody to cook for and those I have cooked for have liked it, and the food has been good, but it just wasn't enough for me. Something is missing and I can't seem to figure out what it is... ummm... maybe it is the fact that I am cooking in other people's kitchens and I don't have one of my own and the fact that my life is being held hostage and I don't have anything that belongs to me. I have been so lonely lately because nobody will let me cook. I wanted to roast a duck for Thanksgiving and make a real fest, but nobody wanted it. I wanted to do the same for Christmas, and my parents want to go out. I have cooked for a few friends and that has been fun, but once again, in their kitchens. There is something unkind about that to me. It seems violating and weird and I am not sure why. I had one disaster. I made lavender rosette teacakes and they tasted like bath oil. They were very cute and pretty, but lord they tasted like I licked someone's foot after an aromatic bath.

I did make a pretty good meal for my friend. He invited me over to cook dinner for him and I made my stuffed chicken with spinach and provolone cheese and added a wonderful mushroom cream sauce to the top, a recipe that was my inner Julia Child. He bought a soft red and I was not happy about it. He said not everything is about me. I found it selfish considering I was a guest for one and two, he isn't a wine drinker. Maybe things are not about me, but the wine should be my choice. I guess he felt that since he paid for it he could buy what he wanted and it wasn't about making me, his guest happy. He did it to prove a point in my opinion. This is the difference between my culture at home and everyone else's. My mom raised me better than that. Say what you want about her, but I have great manners and when I invite someone to my house and have them cook for me, I let them pick the wine and I certainly wouldn't go out and buy a sweet wine knowing they love full bodied. I have broken up with men for much less and I have learned my lesson with that one: Always bring my own wine. I don't deal well with men who do things just be controlling and prove a point and I felt that was his point. It was just rude in my opinion. I drank it and it was fizzy, sweet and did not go with what I cooked, but it did make a great deglaze, considering it was basically cooking wine. At any rate, I am completely miserable without a kitchen. I am at my mother's house, but she never eats. My step dad doesn't care about food and feels it is a waste of money to spend on anything but canned soup. I am so excited for the day when I get all my cooking stuff back and I have my own kitchen and I can listen to my cheesy 60 style French pop music in my cute apron and sing and cook and have people over who enjoy my cooking. I am sure I will find someone someday.

Day one: Juice Cleanse

Potassium Broth: Day one is always fun for me. I am not a huge fan of cold food, so juicing can be hard for me, just like eating salad. Salad is very good, but it is cold. I prefer warm food. This is why the potassium broth is so great for me because I can have it for breakfast. I make about three days worth and just leave it on the stove with all the vegetables in it. I don't r put potato in my broth. Take a big pot and put about three sliced beets with leaves, slice up half an onion, four pieces of red kale, celery, radishes, two hand fulls of spinach, half a bunch of fresh parsley, and this year I put a ton of lemon basil from the garden. You can add garlic if you want, but I leave garlic out. However, I put garlic in my tomato, cucumber lemon juice. I put enough water to cover the vegetable in the pot and then bring it to a slow boil before putting it on low, covering it and letting it cook for 4 hours. This is the most amazing broth and I love it soooooo much. Today is the perfect day for this broth because it is a very typical fall day. The wind is blowing and there is a  stormy tornado of yellow, brown an,d red leaves in the backyard. Bobo the rabbit is running around like crazy. I guess he loves the wind. The chickens are very active and the sky is patched with grey and white clouds. Today is the essence of fall.

Apple, Carrot, Ginger: My favorite juice during my cleanse is apple carrot ginger. It is the best. I love ginger and the tartness of green apples. I am not a huge fruit person. I love vegetables, but the sweetness in fruit is too much for me. You won't find much in any of my juice recipes. However, green apples have just enough tartness to make me happy. Carrots are also a little sweet for me, but they are balanced by the spice of the ginger. I made quart of this juice today. I used about 7 apples and 8 carrots and two massive roots of ginger. This was such a nice breakfast. I had to put so much ginger because 8 carrots was way too much. I  should have put in way more apple than carrot, but I fixed it by rejuicing the pulp of the apple and ginger. I had to separate it by hand, but it was worth it.

Cucumber, mint, green apple: It has taken me a long time to come around to cucumbers. I have never been a big fan. Matter of fact, it was just in the last few months that I could bring myself to eat one. I am not sure what it is about them that turn me off, but I have to remind myself that I like them. Today I juiced a whole cucumber, mint and 3 green apples. It took me a minute to get used to the idea of drinking the cucumber juice because of how strongly it smells. Even though the smell is good, it is strong. This is the first time I have used cucumber in my juice that hasn't had tons of lemon, garlic and tomato. I am so happy I made it. I actually wish I put more cucumber in the juice and less apple. Also, I would add more mint, too. I absolutely love it, though. I may even like it more than my ACG juice. It is so crisp and refreshing!

Day one is always easy. I hope you all read this and send me your support. Day three is the hardest for me. Also, check out PCTV tomorrow morning. I will be on there promoting USEE (utah society for environmental education) with Andree Walker Bravo, director of USEE!

Coop de Jour

Today was a day of hard labor. We ripped up the old chicken run and cleaned out the coop. I had on my boots with my jeans tucked in and my fleece with a vest zipped over it. I looked like a real Utahan and I felt like a farmer :) I love working with tools and I have a strange love and desire for manual labor. I love to build structures and hard work that requires getting dirty brings me much joy. After clearing out run and digging up my own dirt to fill in holes, I cleaned out the chicken coop and helped build a structure to keep our baby bunnies in so they could play in the yard. After a long, hard day of work in the cool fall air, nothing in this world sounded as good as a simple chicken and rice soup. I chopped up my carrots, onion, celery, and chicken, chopped some lemon basil from the garden and cooked all my veggies on the stove until they were soft. I added my 2 quarts of stocks, one cup of water and brought it to a boil. I salted and peppered my chicken and added it with the rice. Unfortunately, the rice is still not done. It is taking far longer than I want it to, but I have tasted it and it is great. I cannot wait to make a small bowl of warm soup and rest my eyes.

splitting hares

If any of you read my blog, you know I share a residence with 13 chickens and 5 rabbits. One of those rabbits is Lilly. She is the rabbit I have been trying to get used to me so we can have her in the house with Bobo. Well, surprise surprise. It looks as if my sweet Lilly cakes may be Lillyboy. Either Lilly is a boy, or somehow, Chuck, the neighbor bunny impregnated one of our girls. Two nights ago, we found 7 baby bunnies outside. We were wondering why they were digging such a big hole in the backyard. We honestly thought she was just creating a den. We had no idea we had babies cutie pies on our hands:) It took us two days to catch them all. I caught the first one and named her Alice. She is a Lionhead breed, pure white with red eyes. She has the cutest squished nose and looks like a little cotton ball. I love her so much. There are three brown ones like Lilly, 3 white ones, and one little grey one. They are so precious and amazing. Sadly, we have only caught 5 of them. There are two still out there, sad and lonely without their mother. One of the other female rabbits made her way into the hole today. I noticed some blood spots on her white fur. I fear she has killed the other babies. We have not seen them all day. I really hope I am wrong, but I am afraid she they are not with us anymore:( I will keep you readers posted

Day two of mega bonding

Eli and I are starting to pretend we have our own cooking show for kids. I am teaching him how to stay organized in the kitchen and cleaning as you go. This is the one thing that I find really important when baking. Today, we made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. He wanted them to be like the ones at the store :) However, we made them better. We found a basic recipe from food network and now have more cookies than we can handle. I look forward to giving cookies to our friends.

Every time we bake together, I let him do a little more. If he keeps up with all his good work and helping me clean even when I don't ask him to, I am going to promote him to actually measuring instead of just mixing things. Today, I let him slowly pour the flour into our mixer. He did a great job.

Later after we baked, Holly and I made gluten free, mini pizzas. Eli is still not into trying new things, so he had ramen noodles. We will not be baking tomorrow, but I am going to make grilled polenta with wild mushrooms. It is a special light dinner for our special guests coming over for the debate :)

This is the greatest thing I have ever put in my mouth

Earlier this week I made a gluten free, lemon blueberry cake. It was the first three layered cake I had ever made. In between the the layers, I put homemade blueberry jam (well, I put blueberries in the food processor, then added sugar and heated it up. Is that technically jam?) The frosting was beautiful. I took 1/4 cup of water and added it to a cup of sugar on the stove and stirred while it heated up. Then once it started boiling I stopped stirring and let it heat up to 238 degrees. Then I put it in my mixer with eggs and butter and slowly poured the hot mixture into the mixture with some lemon zest. This was the most decedent, creamy frosting I had ever had. It was beautiful. Issac (Holly's son) came over this weekend for his birthday and there happened to be one slice left. He was lucky I let him have it. He walked away screaming, "This is the best thing I have ever put in my mouth!" It made my day

Ingredients

Cake

·         2 sticks butter, room temperature

·         2 C granulated sugar

·         2 tsp grated lemon zest

·         1 1/2 tsp lemon extract

·         7 egg whites

·         3 C cake flour

·         4 tsp baking power

·         1/4 tsp salt

·         1 1/4 C whole milk

·         1 13 oz. jar blueberry jam with lemon juice

·          

Frosting

·         1 C granulated sugar

·         1/4 C water

·         2 eggs

·         3 sticks ( 1 1/2 C) butter, room temperature

·         2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

·         1 Tbsp grated lemon zest

·         Instructions

·         Cake

1.         Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2.         Grease and flour 3 eight inch cake pans and line bottom with wax paper.

3.         Cream together butter, sugar, lemon zest and lemon extract until fluffy.

4.         Add in the egg whites gradually, a couple at a time. Beat well between additions and scrape down sides of bowl.

5.         Mix together in another bowl the flour, baking powder and salt.

6.         Alternating flour and milk, beat the dry ingredients and milk into the butter mixture. Beat on medium speed for one minute to eliminate any lumps.

7.         Set aside 1 cup of batter in a small bowl.

8.         Divide the remaining batter between the three cake pans, smooth top with spatula.

9.         Add 2 1/2 Tbsp jam to the reserved batter and mix well.

10.       Drizzle by the teaspoon over the batter in the pans.

11.       Use a wooden skewer to swirl the blueberry mixture into the lemon batter without mixing it in.

12.       Bake for 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean and cake pulls away from the sides.s

13.       Let cool for 10-15 minutes and remove from pan onto a wire rack. Cool completely.

Frosting

1.         In a small pan combine the sugar and water. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stir to dissolve sugar.

2.         Continue boiling without stirring. Use a pastry brush and some water to wash down the sides of the pan to remove sugar on the sides of pan. Heat until syrup reaches the soft ball stage or 238 degrees. Immediately remove from heat.

3.         In a large mixer beat the eggs briefly on medium speed.

4.         Slowly add the hot syrup in a thin stream, pouring it down the sides of the bowl. Do not allow it to hit the beaters or may splash.

5.         After all the syrup has been added raise speed to medium high speed and beat until the mixture is fluffy and cooled to body temperature. About 15-20 minutes.

6.         Reduce speed to medium low and gradually add the softened butter 2 - 3 Tbsp at a time, beat well between additions.

7.         Add in lemon juice and zest.

8.         To assemble cake place one layer on cake stand and spread with half the blueberry jam. Place second layer on top and spread with the remaining blueberry jam. Add third layer and frost the cake on top and the sides with buttercream. Garnish with blueberries and lemon slices

Serve and enjoy.

Is there anything cake can't do?

Since I have moved in with the Starks', Eli and I have had our ups and downs. Lately, more downs than ups. His mother is a lot nicer than I am and more tolerate of his awful behavior. As a person who has been in education for over 10 years, I have a different approach to children than a mother would. Not only that, but I am firm, direct, and I will sit there and let you starve if you throw a fit about dinner. It is his choice if he wants to eat or not. And if his choice is to storm off and kick a box very loudly for 45 mins, fine. Wear yourself out! But, I guess I am just mean and it is why I don't have kids. However, Eli and I bonded today.

Eli loves Cake Boss. This is a show I used to watch a lot, too. Not so much anymore. However, I watched it with him last night. He started asking me questions about the history, asking me if I know certain techniques like the Cake Boss uses, etc. It was wonderful. By the end of the night, he was in the chair, sitting with me and we were talking about cake. It was so wonderful.

Today Eli and I decided to make cookies together. He wanted to make Halloween sugar cookies and frost them. He actually paid really close attention and wanted to help. He said, "this is the most funnest day I have ever had!" Every part was his favorite part. Sifting the flours, pouring in the eggs, adding the sugar. He even tried gluten free cake for the first time. 


After we finished our dough for the cookies, we let it set in the freezer and went out to dinner for his brother's birthday. His plan was for us to bake and frost them while the family watched Waking Dead. We are not fans of the show because we think it is gross (second bonding moment of the day!) But, before we went to dinner, we decided to bake a cake since the baking bug had crawled into our brains.

We made a gluten free, pumpkin spice bundt cake with a cream cheese drizzle and a walnut crumble (walnuts I shelled myself from walnuts in the backyard!) It was perfect. He was so helpful and helped me with the dishes. He said he would be the dish drier and went on about how he would never be a dishwasher at a restaurant :) This seven year old boy worked so hard today. The boy who never tries new things tried something new. I got him to shower, wear pants, and clean without being asked. I couldn't believe it. I actually convinced a seven year old boy to take a shower, all because of cake. Is there nothing sweets can't do? 

Eli baked with me all day. We got home from dinner and we got out our dough. It needed to sit out for a little while, so we started on our royal icing. We made orange, green, blue, and yellow. Our cookie shapes were pumpkins and ghosts. He did such a great job frosting all the cookies and said one day he and I would have our own baker. 

After we were done baking, he said it was time for us to go watch Cake Boss so we can learn some more techniques. We crawled into the large chair with me and fell asleep in my lap watching some crazy Italian-American from Jersey frost giant cakes:) I hope his dreams are just as sweet. Tomorrow: pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Stay tuned:)

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

·         4 cups sifted all-purpose flour

·         1 teaspoon baking powder

·         1/2 teaspoon salt

·         1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

·         2 cups granulated sugar

·         2 large eggs

·         2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Directions

1.     Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.

2.     Put butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Gradually mix in flour mixture. Divide dough in half; flatten each half into a disk. Wrap each in plastic. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour or overnight.

3.     Preheat oven to 325 degrees with racks in upper and lower thirds. Let one disk of dough stand at room temperature just until soft enough to roll, about 10 minutes. Roll out dough between two pieces of plastic wrap to 1/4 inch thick. Remove top layer of plastic wrap. Cut out cookies with a 4-inch one-piece-shaped cookie cutter. To make an ornament, cut out a hole from the center of the neck about 1/4-inch from the edge using a straw. Transfer cookie dough on plastic wrap to a baking sheet. Transfer baking sheet to freezer, freeze until very firm, about 15 minutes. Remove baking sheet from freezer and transfer shapes to baking sheets lined with nonstick baking mats. Roll out scraps, and repeat. Repeat with remaining disk of dough.

4.        Bake, switching positions of sheets and rotating halfway through, until edges turn golden, 15 to 18 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks.

Royal Icing 

Ingredients

·         1/2 cup meringue powder

·         8 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions

1.         Using a hand mixer with the beater attachments, beat together meringue powder with 1 cup water until peaks form. Add sugar and continue mixing until smooth. If mixture seems too thick, add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and mix until desired consistency is reached. If mixture seems too thin, add confectioners' sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, until desired consistency is reached

           Ingredients

·         Nonstick cooking spray, for pan

·         4cups Pamela’s gluten free baking flour

·         1 teaspoon salt

·         1 tablespoon ground ginger

·         2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

·         1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

·         1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

·         1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan

·         2 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar

·         4 large eggs

·         1 cup buttermilk

·         1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin puree

           Directions

1.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 14-cup Bundt pan with cooking spray. Dust with flour, and tap out excess.

2.        Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Set aside.

3.        Beat butter and brown sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, on medium speed until pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down sides of bowl. Reduce speed to low. Beat in flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with the buttermilk. Beat until just combined. Add pumpkin puree, and beat until combined. Pour batter into prepared pan Bake cake until golden and a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Carefully turn cake onto rack too cool completely.