I have eaten the last of the caramels made by my grandfather. I think I made the last batch last three years, sneaking them one at a time out of the freezer. But they are gone now. I may go into withdrawals at any moment. To add to my list of things for the kitchen: candy thermometer and marble slabs and a stainless pot of sufficient size. Maybe one of those neat double handled knives Mom has… which could be useful for cutting large cheeses as well. I still need the 16 or 20 quart stainless pot for cheese making, …
Category: in the kitchen
The only thing in dinner tonight that came out of a can were the olives. Just about everything else can be accounted for. Homemade pizza crust, with homemade sauce. I made the mozzarella yesterday, with milk from Golden Glen Creamery. The tomatoes came from Rockridge Orchards. The zucchini came from the Alvarez Organic Farm. The pizza was a little overcooked – still trying to find the best way to divide the dough so that Ian and I get a pizza to share and Caitlyn gets her own pizza, with only the things she wants (“Nothing scary, Mama, ok?”). And the …
We hosted the Christmas festivities this year, something we’ve never done before. Here’s what I learned: three pies is excessive for eight people calculate serving portions based on the weight of the chicken breasts, not on the number of chicken breasts if serving a large breakfast to the assembled masses, reduce the scale of dinner – don’t overstuff everyone twice hot spiced cider may have been more popular than wine at 4pm when menu planning, figure out not only how much of what ingredients to have, but also plan baking times so that you don’t end up with a completed …
I’ve, more or less recently, gotten interested in paying attention to the seasons. Not just in a “Gee it’s really stormy this afternoon” kind of way, but in a “Circle of Life” kind of way (with apologies for the Lion King reference). And part of paying attention to the seasons, for me, seems to be eating local, seasonal food. There are lots of reasons to eat locally and seasonally, not least of which is minimizing how far the food has to travel before it ends up in my kitchen. Yes, it’s possible to get strawberries in January, but they didn’t …