Thursday, January 27, 2011

A Diversion

Coming to our home this week is a new diversion yet to be named. Confused? Well, dear daughter has been living with us for the past eight months while she completes grad work at Concordia University, and she purchased a Pembroke Welsh Corgi just days after she came to live with us. Tom and I have become very attached to little Penny, and with Lynsey's wedding just five months away, we were beginning to realize how much we will miss Penny. (Yes, we will miss Lynsey too, but it is different. Really it is!)

Last Friday I finally found a Pembroke Welsh Corgi puppy for Tom and I. She is a tri-color pup currently living in Idaho. She is yet unnamed because Tom gets the honor of giving her a name, and he believes he needs to actually meet her to assign the proper name. Many suggestions have been submitted, probably the most hilarious is the name Grammar. It was a student's suggestion and our whole family found it a bit fun. We'll see if/how that gets incorporated.

We get our pup this Saturday and she will need much attention as she is only 8 weeks old. My hope is that I will be able to continue on my path of baking a new dessert once a week, ridding myself of about 30 things each month, and posting an occasional glimpse into my growing up years. (I fear the last will suffer the most in the coming months) For now, here are a few pictures of our new girl.

  
 

Week 4 Part I

Blond Brownies  ☆☆☆☆ [pg 97 HFC]
Somewhere in the past year I heard my sister say that my dad enjoys blond brownies more than regular brownies, and so this Monday I threw together some blond brownies. I like that these are made with ingredients I have on hand and they can easily be mixed by hand; no need to dirty the mixer.

The brownies were baked until they were a nice golden color and seemed firm to the touch. As is usual, I have a hard time waiting until they were cool for taste testing. Who doesn't love a warm brownie? When I first bit into this bar I was afraid I hadn't baked them enough. Then I mentally compared them to the consistency of my favorite regular brown. I like brownies more moist, and so I determined these brownies would need to be taste tested again when they were thoroughly cooled.


The next day, I tasted them and they were great. I like that they have just a bit of chocolate and who doesn't like walnuts in a brownie? Oh....wait...both my kids. :-(

Well, based on how fast these brownies are disappearing with just Tom and I eating them, I would say they rate a strong four but Tom says if regular brownies are a five (and they are for both him and me) then these are a four. A strong rating but given a choice, regular brownies will win out every time.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Week 3 Part II

While my goal for 2011 is related to trying the desserts in our family cookbook, the dessert baking has inspired other baking. This week I made two loaves of bread. I was striving for something very similar to the Artisan bread I love to purchase at the local grocery store.

My first loaf was a no-knead loaf made with all bleached flour and 1/4 cup of lager beer as part of the ingredients. It was a tasty loaf but did not rise much. A day later my newest kitchen purchase arrived and I was able to make another no-knead loaf.

This recipe was found at Breadtopia and has the most unusual thing about the dough is the 18 hour standing time.

I made the whole wheat recipe and replaced 1/4 cup of the water with lager beer, and set it to rest for the required 18 hours. The next day, I completed the loaf following the directions on the Breadtopia website. It is sticky and I really appreciated my plastic baker's scrapper. After a quick shaping the dough gets another 90 minute rest.

After a rest, the dough is carefully dropped into the preheated baker. (Watch the video at Breadtopia) This clay baker works at 500°. Wow that is hot, but it produced that lovely hard crust and soft interior that I so love about the Artisan bread at the grocery store.

I have determined that whole wheat bread baking is an art unto itself, and I plan to stick to the all-purpose flour loaves for a while in an effort to perfect them. I grew up on white bread and a desire to make bread can only come from a desire to connect to my mom—therefore, white bread it shall be, for now.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Week 3 Part I

Date Frying Pan Cookies ☆☆☆☆ [pg 106 HFC]
These cookies were some I remembered from my childhood, or at least I remember my sister making them one Christmas. Dates are not something I normally have in the house so I would need to plan to make these. Chopping dates is not easy, so I chose to cut them with kitchen shears. Even so, I needed to dip the shears in hot water several times to de-stick them. This is fussy work to me.

The ingredients go together easily but you need to cook and stir them for 10 minutes. Seriously?! My arms aren't that fit. This was a long time, but I hoped worth the effort. Once all the Rice Krispies were stirred in, I began the process of making the little balls of cookies. Yuck, what a sticky mess and my coconut didn't stick very well. I was beginning to think these would never be worth the effort.

Then the taste test. Wow, these have pretty good flavor. They certainly are different but not bizzare different, good different. Jason was available to give a review and we all agreed they worth a four on the rating scale. They are not like chocolate chip cookies you crave, but they are tasty and would be a nice addition to a cookie plate at a holiday. The next day Kyle was at our house and he also rated them a four. So after all my fussing and a bit of grumbling as I made the cookies, we all agreed they are tasty and worth making again, although they are a special occasion cookie to be made once or twice a year.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Week 2 Part II

Chocolate Streusel Bars ☆☆☆☆☆ [pg 109 HFC]
When considering these bars, I opted to make the complete batch since I was not sure how using just the egg white would affect the consistency of the cream cheese layer. As the recipe notes, the initial mixture is very dry and I was concerned the base of the bar would stick together. I made sure the butter was very evenly distributed and well pressed into the pan. A solid brownie like crust was formed, but it was much less dense than a regular brownie. Since I did not have confectioner's sugar on hand, I used powdered sugar. As noted at the bottom of the recipe, they are not the same, but I assumed the contributor of this recipe used powdered sugar as well.
I missed the instruction to chill the brownies and so ours were served at room temperature and were very good. Both Tom and I give them five stars. They are flavorful and a bit rich, but not so much that you need to cut the bars into 1" squares. Since we had 24 bars, much more than we needed for the taste test, Lynsey took them to her Bible study and many said they were very good, confirming my five star rating. These are certainly bars I will make again.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Week 2 Part I

Butter Pecan Cookies  ☆☆☆☆☆ [pg 94 HFC]
This week, on Monday, I made these buttery cookies. I wasn't sure how using just the egg yolk or just the egg white would affect the final product so I made the whole recipe. I used my large cookie scoop (1 1/2 inch cookie balls) and the final cookies seemed too large to me, so I switched to my small scoop. ( 3/4 inch cookie balls) The smaller scoop would allow me to make 36 cookies instead of 24, as noted in the cookbook. You can see the larger cookies in the left pile and smaller ones on the right.

The cookies were given a rating of 4 by me (it is hard to give a 5 rating to a cookie without chocolate, but that is my problem) and Nathan gave a rating of 5. He liked that the cookies were thin and loved the flavor. Lynsey gave the cookies a three for the opposite reasons. She likes her cookies a bit thicker, more substance she said, and they were almost too buttery for her.

Later that day, we attended a BCS football game, watching the Oregon Ducks play against the Auburn Tigers. Since I had plenty of cookies, I took them along for ratings from the Davis family. Tony, Debra, and Kyle all gave the cookies a five. They too enjoyed the buttery flavor and the pecans. The cookies have quickly disappeared.

Although, my rating is a 4, an overwhelming number of "qualified" raters gave these cookies a 5 and so that is what will be noted in my cookbook.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Love of a Father

“They say necessity is the mother of invention, so it’s not surprising that the snowmobile was invented in the deep Northwoods of Wisconsin. Born with a bum foot, Carl Eliason of Sayner needed a way to keep up with his friends and to check his traps in the winter. After working on his idea for two years, Eliason developed the prototype for his “motor toboggan” in 1924 and received a U.S. patent for it in 1929.” (Wisconsin Trails 2011)

During my preteen and teen years (and well past my years at home), our family owned snowmobiles. It began with a Polaris around 1969. Not many years later we acquired another sled, an Arctic Cat. Somewhere in the mid to late 1970’s my dad became a huge John Deere fan and we owned two John Deere sleds.

  

When I was growing up, my dad seemed a bit distant. Looking back, I realize he had much responsibility running a 250-acre farm and providing for a family of six; a family that would grow to seven in 1971. Farming was not and is not easy. We never took vacations, never went camping, rarely went on picnics, and all because of the farm. I resented it all through my teen years. When we kids asked if we could go on a vacation, Dad would respond, “We can go anywhere you want, as long as we are back by 6:00 to milk the cows.”

But then the snowmobiles came into our lives and snowmobiling became our vacation. At our house we prayed for snow, but not to have a day off from school. A day off from school meant the morning (or longer) spent cleaning the barn, feeding the cows, and bedding cows and calves. Really bad snow days meant thawing water troughs, silo unloaders, and gutter cleaners—a whole day of work. No, we wanted snow to accumulate over a week or so; the soft gentle snow, falling for days on end so school was still in session but the snow was piling up for the weekend. We wanted snow so the snowmobiles could come out of summer hibernation.

Often the first snowmobiling trip of the season was on Christmas night. My Aunt and Uncle LeJeune, and their three boys, always came for Christmas and always brought their two or three snowmobiles—Skidoos, yuck. Jovial banter about which sled was better and more reliable was always part of the trip. Our sleds were heavier than three of me and if I got that monster stuck, I wasn’t strong enough to lift it out; I was stuck.

The Christmas night ride was tradition. On a good night, we would ride for hours. I don’t remember very many rides being cancelled, despite the cold. If it was below zero, we just bundled up more and made the ride a short one. When the weather was good, and we were lucky, my dad and uncle would plan a whole day of riding for December 26. Christmas just wasn’t Christmas without the LeJeunes with us. Those three boys became my big brothers.

Snowmobiling fever really took a hold of my dad. Soon we were acquiring helmets, special gloves, one-piece snowmobile suits, and big insulated snow boots. Occasionally, in the evenings, my mom and dad would go riding with a group of neighbors. Another aunt and uncle were really into snowmobiling, and soon our two families had created a snowmobile club—the Sno Knights. We even had patches made for our snowmobile suits.


The Sno Knights would plan daylong adventures that would become vacations for our family. The day before the ride, Dad and Uncle Dave would venture into the Blue Hills of Northern Wisconsin and blaze a trail for our “vacation.” Chores were completed quickly on vacation days so that more time could be spent on the trails. Hot dogs, Shasta pop, hot chocolate, and cookies were loaded up with the firewood into our mush sled. The sled looked much like an Alaskan dog sled, but it was not nearly as lightweight. It had well built sides so two kids and supplies could be hauled easily. Trucks and trailers full of snowmobiles and accessories rolled into the Blues Hills. We kids were giddy with anticipation for the day’s ride.

The mid-day stop was a much-needed break from the trail. The fire provided an opportunity to warm up and make a hot lunch. As a young teen girl, wearing a one-piece snowmobile suit, I was quite careful about the amount of fluid consumed. Men don’t have the same bathroom issues as women wearing these one-piece straight jackets. Going to the bathroom was just one topic for complaint, and occasionally the cold was the other top area of contention. But these are not the things I choose to remember about our snowmobile vacations.

The crisp smell of snow, warmth of the sled, comfort of hotdogs and hot chocolate, banter about the best brand of sled, frozen eyelashes, cold fingers and toes, smell of snowmobile gas, drone of the snow machines, and time spent with family and friends are the things I remember. So much so, that 40 years later the smell of snow or sound of a snowmobile brings wonderful family memories flooding back to my mind, memories of a farm family’s version of a vacation. It is a reminder that as we grow our vision of our father can change. A father, who seemed to be distant, really wasn’t. He had his way of showing love for his family. My personal growth allows me to see my father more clearly.

Similarly, my growth in faith should allow me to see my Heavenly Father more clearly. My immature vision of a distant father was so wrong. He is a Father who loves me unconditionally and I don’t always understand His actions of love. I must choose to grow and mature in faith in order to see Him correctly. This is not a growth that occurs naturally as each day passes. This is a growth that only happens by choice, and each day I must make the choice to grow and mature. Will you make that choice today?