RecipeMuncher

* Hung out a load of laundry this morning.  I don't know why I love doing that so much, but I do.  It's not a chore at all.

* Bill's brewing a big batch of beer with his friend, John.  But that's outside, so I have the kitchen for me.

* Hardboiled some white eggs this mornign (a little too long - no idea how long they were boiling - I was outside hanging socks on the line and communing with nature and completely forgot the eggs were on the stove.  After the eggs were cooled, I had the kids crack the shells a bit and pick out food coloring.  At this moment, the eggs are all soaking in the mugs and bowls of colored water.  I also kept two eggs for myself, so I could mess around with them, designwise and colorwise.  I'll post pictures of them later.

* I was planning (earlier in the week) to make Hot Cross Buns yesterday, but I didn't get to them, and so I'm switching gears and I'm making Choureg, or Choreg, an Armenian sweetbread, which I've never made before, but so far it smells really good.  I'll post all that later today, hopefully.

* Last night I made brownies with Alex in mind - he has recently discovered the joy and rapture that accompanies the consumption of either Mounds or Almond Joy bars, and I decided to translate that fabulousness to brownie form.  I'm fairly pleased with the results.  Need to upload those photos and write up the recipe, I know.

* Tomorrow we'll be heading to my cousin's house for brunch, as we do every Easter.  They have an easter egg hunt for the kids (it's dwindled down to 3 young kids - so I'm not sure how many more years they plan to do this portion), and then LOTS of really good food.  My cousin's wife is a phenomenal cook and, like me and a lot of people who cook well and like to cook, she also tends to make enough food to feed a small country.  I've been asked to bring a coffee cake, something like this one, but I don't have pears, I have apples, so it will be slightly different.

* For lunch yesterday Bill made a red curry seafood dish, which we had over rice.  The kids just had some grilled swordfish and sea scallops.  I love red curry.  I think I could eat red curry dishes every day and be perfectly content.  Well, okay, maybe not forever, but it would take me a long time to get sick of it.

* Hmmmmm…I should make some sandwich bread today, too, since we're nearly out of it.  Hm.  Maybe.  I don't know.  I'm feeling lazy about it.  Maybe I'll make it tomorrow night.  Or Monday.

* Gotta go wash a few dishes now.   I hope you're having a lovely day!

First, in case you were wondering, my basement is dry.  We were so lucky.  All the flooding and home evacuations and submerged vehicles and complete loss did not happen to us.  We were so lucky.

The kids' school was closed, though, because the sewage treatment center for our area was broken and underwater, so they were asking everyone to conserve water by not doing laundry, running the dishwasher - or flushing the toilet unless absolutely necessary.  But we can flush now, so our minescule hardship is at an end.

The Warwick Mall, probably a mile, at most, from where I am, is flooded.  The parking lot a lake with oil slicks and the roofs of submerged cars.  I-95 was flooded nearby as well, and reopened yesterday after being shut down for a couple of days.  So much flooding, so much devastation, so much loss. 

Today I've got to clean the house, as we've got a play date scheduled for later today.  And I've got some baking to do, and maybe a batch of mozzarella…we'll see.

Back to normal for us.  So lucky.  So lucky.

Family lore has it that my maternal grandfather wrote poetry to my maternal grandmother when they were just eleven years old.

Alex still thinks girls are yucky, but he has written a few poems about other topics, and I thought I'd share two of them.

The first is one he wrote at some point last fall.  I think this was probably up on the wall in his class (along with poetry offerings by his classmates) for a while - we didn't see it until somewhere around Christmas break.  It's hanging on the wall in our dining room.

What is Fall?

Fall is walking to school on a cold day,

Fall is when the leaves change to red, orange and yellow,

Fall is going apple picking on a pretty day,

Fall is squirrels getting ready for the winter.

And this second one…well, if you've been reading here for any length of time, you know what Alex's first culinary true love is, so the fact that he penned (or pencilled) these lines should come as no surprise….

What is Sushi?

Sushi is a Japanese food,

Sushi is a yummy food,

Sushi is some raw fish with sticky rice below it,

Sushi is sometimes spicy,

I love sushi!

What more is there to say?

I'm not sleeping well.  I have a lot on my mind.  And I've been drinking iced coffee too late in the day, in the hopes that it will keep me motivated to stay up late and Accomplish Things.  And it doesn't.  Or hasn't.  It gets to be around ten and my eyes are just tired.  I long to shut my brain off and go horizontal for a while.  And so I go up to bed, and maybe read a bit, and say goodnight, and shut off the light…and the stuff in my brain just keeps churning.  I have to open the door to that room, order those thoughts back to their beds and tell them to just GO TO SLEEP, IT'S NIGHT TIME and IF I HEAR ANOTHER PEEP OUT OF YOU, YOU'LL BE IN BIG TROUBLE! before closing the door - firmly this time - and then, if I'm successful, I can sleep.

And then…not so frequently now but, still, occasionally…the bedroom door opens and I hear the shuffle of tiny feet on the hardwood floor…and the door closes…and the feet shuffle around the foot of the bed…and a little creature pulls back the covers and slithers up onto the mattress…slithers down under the sheet and blankets as I pull them back up…and snuggles against me.  I look at the clock.  It's 2:29.  It's dark out.  I close my eyes, one arm around Julia, and try to go back to sleep. 

Sometimes I can.  For a while.  But she will fling an arm or head-butt me in her sleep…and I wake up.  I try to get comfortable, sandwiched in between my husband, who is sleeping very well, thank you, and Julia, who is also sleeping nicely.  I lie on my side, a barricade between the restless creature on what used to be my side of the bed and my slumbering, has-to-get-a-good-night's-sleep-to-function-well-the-next-day husband. 

Barricades, I have learned, do not sleep.

I looked at the clock again.  3:15.  I should put her back in her bed.  I've been awake for who knows how long now.  My brain is busy, worrying and thinking and planning…and not sleeping. 

So I get up.  I carry Julia, her body heavy and droopy with sleep, back to her own bed.  I tuck her in and find her cheek under a tangle of hair and I give her a couple of kisses and whisper "I love you, sweetie" in her little ear.  I walk softly out of the room, so as not to wake her, and I hear her move around a bit, and then she says something that I don't quiet make out.  I go back.  "What is it, Julia?" I whisper.  "I love you, too, Mommy," she says, and her voice is slurred a bit, and husky, and I know she will go right back to sleep.

I go downstairs, down to the couch in the basement.  I plug in my laptop and catch up the blogs I read.  I have the TV on, to help silence the annoying chatter in my brain.  I should write a post for today, while it's quiet.  But I don't.  I'll do that later.  When there's daylight.  I don't know why that matters, but I think, this week, it's somehow related to daylightsavingstime.  (It always sounds like one word to me, anyway.)

So that's my story.  It's 4:46 now.  I might go back up to bed for an hour, until Bill needs to get up.  Then I'll make coffee.  Pack his lunch.  Make him breakfast.  Feed the kids.  Break up squabbles.  Pack Alex's lunch.  Get him to school. 

And get on with the rest of my day.

This morning. 

Julia has finished her two fried eggs and a slice of toast and has asked for another piece of toast. 

I look at her plate.  There is a lot of gorgeous nearly orange yolk left, and the crusts from her first slice of toast rest on the edge of the plate.

"Why don't you scoop up the rest of the yolk with your toast?" I ask, fighting the urge to do it myself.

"No…" she said airily.  "That's not what Julia does."

I was sitting with Julia last night. 

The kids were watching something on Nickelodeon. 

A commercial came on. 

I think it was an ad for a CD featuring popular young (tween/early teen) singers, most of whom I'd never heard of. 

I recognized this one boy, though.  Medium blond hair, all of it carefully brushed forward, so his face is completely encircled with the ends of every strand of hair on his head. 

I'm not sure why that is appealing, but I don't know much about such things. 

I'm probably too old to understand, anyway.

Anyway, while he was singing there on the tv, a sweet, soulful expression on what I could see of his face, surrounded as it was by that reverse-mane fringe of hair, Julia said, in a tone of voice older than her not-yet-six years, "That's Justin (mumblemumble).  He's cute." 

I leaned closer.  "Who did you say that was?" 

She tilted her chin up a bit, so she could send the words up toward me without removing her eyes from the tv screen.

"That's Justin BEAVER!"

Last night was the Pasta dinner fundraiser for my husband's students.  You know, the one I baked some cookies for.  According to all reports, the whole night was a huge success; lots of tickets sold, lots of raffle tickets sold, lots of pasta consumed, etc.  The kids and I arrived a bit early, intending to help set up if needed, but all the parent volunteers had already taken care of that, so we just hung out…looked at the stuff on the raffle table…the kids played tag with one of my husband's students.  Eventually we lined up for our pasta and meatballs and salads and bread slices…and once we were done eating, student volunteers came around with little trays of dessert offerings:  Hoodsies, my cookies, and my biscotti.  I couldn't help but look around at the other tables, watching to see who chose a cookie or a biscotti, and trying to tell (often from staring at the backs of their heads) whether or not they were enjoying their selection.  Then I gave up because I really couldn't tell a thing. 

The kids entered some of the raffles, and then we drove home.  I wasn't feeling well (I've got a sore throat and I'm feeling a little run down) so we just watched tv until it was time for the kids to go to bed.  Then I made myself a mug of decaf tea and curled up on the couch under a blanket and watched a rerun of "Bones" until Bill got home.

He came in with a big smile on his face and told me that there were NO cookies or biscotti left.  The biscotti were a hit with the adults, and one of the fathers (who is Italian) was so smitten with them that he invited to have us over for home-cooked Italian meal IF I would show him how to make biscotti.  That would be fun, actually, so we'll see if it happens.

Anyway, it was nice to get all the positive feedback, and I told Bill I'd make cookies (and biscotti) again next year if he'd like.

So - yay.  I'm glad I did it. 

And here - since people seemed to like it - is the recipe for the biscotti I made.  I'm sorry, I don't have any pictures of the process or the final product, but if you'd like to see something similar, you can go to this biscotti post from a few years ago - it's the same process, but with different add-ins.

Lemon Biscotti with Candied Ginger and White Chocolate Chips

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided (one half cup, and one half plus 2 T)

3 eggs, separated

1 teaspoon vanilla

zest of one large lemon

12 oz white chocolate chips

1/2 cup candied ginger, diced very small

~~~

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.  Line two cookie sheets with parchment. 

Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.  Set aside.

Combine white chocolate chips and candied ginger in another bowl.  Mix them together with your hands to separate the ginger bits as much as possible, so they don't end up sticking together in clumps in your biscotti later.  Set aside.

Combine zest with 1/2 cup sugar and rub together with your fingers until all the zest is worked into the sugar.  (Thanks, Dorie!)

In the bowl of your mixer, beat together the butter and lemon/sugar until fluffy.  Add the vanilla and egg yolks, scraping the bowl down after each addition.

Scrape this mixture into the big bowl with your dry ingredients and combine, using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon or your hands; whatever works best.  The mixture will be pretty dry and crumbly.

Clean out your mixing bowl completely and dry it.  You want NO butter or egg yolk left in that bowl, otherwise this next part won't work.

Pour your egg whites into the mixing bowl and, with the whisk attachment, whip on medium-high spead until the eggs are very frothy and starting to thicken.  Slowly pour the rest of your sugar (the 1/2 cup plus 2 T) into the whites, with the motor still running, and continue whipping until you have firm peaks.  Congratulations:  you have achieved meringue.

Scrape the meringue into the bowl with your crumbly mixture and, using a large rubber spatula (a rubber bowl scraper also works) fold in the meringue.  When that's done, fold in your ginger and white chocolate.

Now, at this point you can either divide the dough in half and make two logs and end up with biscotti about 5-6 inches long and about 3/4" to an inch thick, half an inch wide, OR, if you like bigger biscotti, just make one log on one of the pans instead.  I like to make them smaller, because then I end up with MORE, but that's just me. 

Form the logs (or log) by placing the dough in the center of the baking sheet.  Wet your hands (the dough won't stick to wet hands) and shape the blob of dough into a log down the length of the pan (or diagonally, which gives you a bit more room) and then, starting in the middle, press it down until it's about half an inch thick. 

Bake this (or these) in your 325 oven for about half an hour or so.  You want it to be cooked through but not done yet.  A little golden brown around the edges is fine, but the top should still be pale.  Remove the pan from the oven and let the dough cool for five to ten minutes.  Reduce the oven temp to 300.

Place the log on a cutting board and cut slices about half an inch thick.  (If you slice on the diagonal, they look fancier.)  Place the slices back on the baking sheet, cut side down, and bake for about ten minutes or so, until they're golden brown on the underside, then flip them all over and bake again for another ten minutes.  Let them cool on the baking sheets, and then store them airtight.

Biscotti will keep for a couple of weeks, I believe.  I wouldn't know from actual experience - they don't last long enough around here for me to find out!