Malawry

This afternoon, I did a little MEP for dinner, and I reduced all 8 quarts of chicken stock so it doesn't take up so much room in my freezer. I also managed to get in a little 30min nap, which greatly improved my mood and energy levels. Mom arrived around 4:30ish. This is what 8 quarts of stock look like: This is what 8 cups of stock look like: Here's what I made for the three of us for dinner: Salad with five-spice pecans and shallot-sherry vinaigrette Tomato soup Seared duck breast with pears and poire william-demi sauce, mashers, asparagus with butter and balsamic My husband had strawberries and whipped cream. Mom and I are digging into the cheesecake in a little while. The pecans are simple...saute in butter with a little salt, sugar and Chinese five-spice powder. The vinaigrette is leftover from a vinaigrette demonstration in my Jefferson County class 2 weeks ago...shallots, mustard, sherry vinegar, s, p, EVOO. I brunoised some onions to put in the sauce for the duck. The sauce included this poire william eau-de-vie that I bought in France last year and never took the opportunity to crack open. It smells amazing and I look forward to drinking some in a few months after the baby is born. The sauce contains butter, onion, poire william and demi. I sauteed some peeled, sliced pears to serve atop the duck. The sauce is on the back burner. I whipped the cream early this afternoon. Half of it got Splenda, the other half powdered sugar, so everybody can have whip to their tastes. The salads included some red onion and red bell pepper for color. Tomato soup made it onto the menu 'cause it was leftover from last night. The plated entree. My spouse didn't get mashed potatoes, and we gave him two duck breasts. Mom wanted more mashers than I did (she didn't already have them for lunch today) so she got a bigger pile. I was very into the pears and gave myself plenty of them. Everybody was satisfied with dinner. I was too full for dessert, as was Mom, but I think we'll find some room shortly. My husband had to run to the university for a concert, and Mom and I are planning a quiet evening with a few games of Rummikub alone here. BTW, Mom brought me some books my grandfather was hanging onto from his place. He took a serious turn for the worse healthwise in recent months (he just turned 90) and she and Dad have been working on moving him out of his Florida condo and into a nursing home where they live in Greensboro where he can get the care he needs. Zayde still had some of my Bubbe's old cookbooks in his place...he gave me her 1950s Settlement Cookbook when I last visited because I was so interested in paging through it. Well, tonight's haul includes Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and a bunch of old Jewish cookbooks I hadn't heard of before. I am very happy about all this! Plus it meant I finally released Mom's copy of MtAoFC back to her--I'd been holding it hostage for years.

I ended up baking the sweet potato that I mashed. It came out just fine. Thanks for all the advice, though! I always boil regular potatoes for mashing.

Yes, some of them are using the techniques I've shown them--or at least fantasizing about using the techniques, anyway. Last night several people were talking about making biscuits for shortcakes sometime soon since they'd loved them so much two weeks ago. Next week in Frederick is my tapas class. I'm still working out the menu but it will definitely include romesco sauce, breadsticks with serrano, something with manchego, and a potato tortilla. Suggestions welcome...I just got a copy of Jose Andres Tapas book and plan to spend some time paging through it over the next few days. Next week in Jefferson County, I'm teaching some basics of fish and poultry. I was thinking some kind of Asian-spiced seared salmon and perhaps braised chicken thighs.

I mentioned it to some people, but nobody expressed interest in checking it out so I didn't give the URL to anybody. Well, except Martin from the Journal-News, to whom I am about to send a link.

So, for my monthly column, the newspaper usually sends a photographer to my house to take step-by-step photos of whatever I'm making. I try to set things up in advance so that the photographer doesn't have to wait for everything to cook from the beginning while he's here. I also always arrange for us to sit down and eat whatever I've made after we're done cooking and snapping photos, which is always a good time. There are three staff photographers at the Journal-News, and I've had each of them at my house before. Today, Martin showed up. I always arrange my MEP before the photog arrives so it's ready to be shot. I had some potatoes working before Martin made it to my house, so we could start mashing some pretty much immediately. I also had a yam in the oven roasting in advance, thanks to the suggestions here, and had roasted some garlic cloves earlier in the morning. I always dry out boiled potatoes before I mash them using my ricer. The more water you get out of the potatoes, the more butter and cream you can cram in there to replace it! As you can see, I add a lot of cream to my potatoes...I like them kinda loose and rich. The garlic probably could have used a little more time in the oven to mellow out. As it is, I have very garlicy breath right now. As you can see, we made 4 types of mashers: plain, roasted garlic, horseradish, and some sweet potato mash with a touch of maple syrup. This now means I've spent two days in a row eating potatoes for lunch! Martin seemed a little confused as to why I'd want to take a picture of him taking pictures of my food, but he went along with it. It was a very meta-experience. Now I just have to write the column! Heh heh.

So, I took a photo of the finished, unstrained chicken stock right before class started last night: Can't you almost smell it? I think stock makes a house smell like a home. I'm just waiting for stock-scented air fresheners to come on the market. I didn't take any pictures during my class...too busy actually teaching to stop and snap anything. We did manage to get everything done last night, including a good 45 minutes of talking about what stock is and how you can use it. I might bring in some of my demi-glace next week because I explained what it was and what it takes to make it, and some of my students were amazed that anybody would spend that much time on any ingredient that they didn't eat straight-up. (Well, I might occasionally eat a little spoonful of demi when nobody's looking, but don't tell!) I did, however, have a little time before class to muck about with the camera and the demo kitchen mirror so you can see how cute I look in chef apparel these days. You can sorta see my belly in these images, sorta not...the side view makes it a little easier... There are only two people selling maternity chef jackets that I could find online...one sells only custom-made, gorgeous jackets with embroidery around the neckline and cuffs that cost about $160, and the other sells rather ordinary-looking versions for about $60. I just couldn't see spending even $60 on a jacket I'd only need for several months, so I ended up buying a $30 jacket in November that's several sizes too large with the hopes it'd fit over my belly. It does, but it's huge in every other regard. And a small part of me wishes I showed more while wearing the jacket.

A china cap and a chinois are both conically-shaped strainers. A china cap is coarser, with larger holes, and will take out most distinguishable solids from a liquid. A chinois is much finer, with a tightly woven screen or tiny pinholes as openings, and strains out much of the fine "muck" that's missed by a china cap or other strainer. With both, you suspend the strainer over a bowl or pot or whatever (there's usually a hook so you can hook it to the rim) and pour the liquid in. You can use a ladle or a spatula to help force the mixture through by plunging it up and down, touching the bottom with each stroke, or you can use something like a knife steel to tap the rim repeatedly to help push things through (but don't you DARE do that when I am around or the sound will drive me stir crazy and I WILL KILL YOU to make it stop. Ahem! ) If your name is Thomas Keller, you regard these techniques as blasphemy and insist on letting liquids spend all day straining through a chinois if that's what it takes, and then you repeat the process, washing the chinois and straining again until nothing catches in the screen. If your name is Anthony Bourdain, you tell people to use a ladle to mash lobster bodies against the strainer so you get every last smidgen of liquid out of the stuff and then yell at your newbie employee to get on with her life and start on the next job already. A tamis is a drum-shaped sieve used mostly for moist but not liquid mixtures. It looks like a cake pan with a screen instead of a solid circle on the bottom. You can buy different tamis with different finenesses, depending on your needs. To use a tamis, you turn it screen-up over a bowl or plate and put your moist mixture on the screen. Use a plastic bowl scraper or rubber spatula type device to push the mixture through the screen. When you're done pushing everything through the screen, turn the tamis over and scrape anything clinging to the underside of the screen into your bowl. I do not own a tamis, though I've thought about buying one. If you ever need to push a meat through the tamis, get as much of the sinew out of the meat as humanly possible before you start shoving it through the screen. Unless you, like, enjoy living in a world of hurt, that is.

We didn't do a vertical tasting of canned, aseptically packaged and powdered stock substitutes or anything. I did discuss those items and explain how they are attempting to imitate the Real Deal. And we did taste chicken that had been poached for an hour against chicken that had been pooped to death in the stock for 4+ hours. If I did a vertical tasting of stocks, I'd have to figure out what to do with the leftovers! (I hate throwing away food with a passion.) Your chocolate question is a good one, and I don't have a response for it beyond "I wouldn't cook with a chocolate I thought tasted bad." Just as I wouldn't cook with a wine I thought was yucky. Tremendous energy? Whazzat? I feel like I'm running on fumes much of the time these days.

So I took some pictures of the kitchen where I teach Thursdays last night. In Jefferson County, there is currently only one high school, and it's bursting at the seams. A couple of years ago, the county built a new complex on the campus of the high school just to handle the ninth graders...and they dubbed it the "Ninth Grade Complex." It's the newest building in the school system (I think), and it has a pretty nice Family and Consumer Sciences classroom in the back. I only shot the half of the classroom with kitchens. Behind the demo station, there's a half-wall separating the room; the other side is occupied with sewing machines. This is the view from the door of the classroom. You can see the demo island in the center. There are four kitchenettes along the left side there in addition to the demo island. For some reason they built the demo island very narrow and small, so it's hard for me to do everything I need to do there. I've found myself setting up MEP and sticking it on the border half-wall between the two kitchenettes directly in front of the island. That's ok, because in this class almost everybody spends most of the time crowded around the demo island, and so I can just ask somebody to hand me whatever I need. The students here are very active and inquisitive, and they're a ball to teach! The view from the other side of the demo island. As you can see, I got my stock working again as soon as I walked in before I took any photos. The kitchenette at the far end of this photo is actually designed to be handicap-accessible, which I think is very cool even if none of my students have mobility impairments. The ADA has caused all sorts of interesting changes to how classrooms are designed, including Family and Consumer Sciences classrooms. All the cabinets in the kitchenettes are stocked with equipment (and I'm allowed to use it, unlike in Frederick), but I do find myself schlepping more professional-type equipment back and forth because the selection is often paltry. There are no china caps, chinoises, scales, spiders, stockpots. So I bring those things from home. Ack! The Journal-News is here to photograph my mashers story. More later...

Question about those "yams" (which I think are really sweet potatoes)... Is it better to boil or bake them if the goal is to mash them up and mix them with other yummy things?

So, here's some images of my home kitchen as promised. I don't have the mental energy at this hour to upload all the photos from last night, but they'll be coming at a more decent hour today, I swear. This is the view of the kitchen from the living room, which is all one large open attached space. You can see my kitchen work table right in front of the camera, the island beyond that, and the range against the far wall. We ripped out the electric range that was in this house when we bought it and installed a gas range to replace it. Natural gas service is not available in this area...Harpers Ferry is at the convergence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, and supposedly the rivers make it impossible to run natural gas lines for some reason. There is a gas log fireplace in the living room with a propane tank outside to service it, so I called the propane company and had them run a line from the tank into the kitchen so we could cook on gas, and then they installed the range for us. Most gas ranges come with a conversion kit so they can run on either propane or natural gas. Our range is a midlevel Kenmore version, with 5 burners (2 "power burners," 1 "simmer burner") and a generously-proportioned oven. You can't see it, but just before the fridge on the right along that wall there's a second oven, a wall oven that we also had installed when we moved here. It's electric. I use it for all pastry applications and anything else where temperature consistency is important because I think it heats more evenly than the gas one. The gas one is kinda mucky inside because I crank it and put seared meats in there to finish cooking all the time...so the fat spatters all over the place. The gas oven also has a pizza stone in it at all times, 'cause you never know when you need a pizza. The electric oven looks much like the photos Marlene posted after she cleaned her oven on the inside 'cause we never put anything potentially messy in there. I don't use the second oven all that often, but it's indispensable when I do need it. I absolutely love the John Boos worktable we bought for the kitchen. It means I can set up a lot of different things at once when I'm working on a catering job without running out of counter space. You can see the living room (and the gas log fireplace) behind it. The table is super heavy-duty, and when the metal shelf underneath it is empty it makes a cool "bonnnnnnnng" noise if I set something heavy on the maple butcher-block top. The table is enormously heavy and cost about $750 including free shipping from Chef Depot. This table theoretically makes it easier for me to run cooking classes out of my home, which I plan to look at more seriously after Baby Colin arrives... I think where you eat is as important as where you cook. This solid wood table belonged to my Bubbe (Grandmother) Ruth Myers, who passed away about 10 years ago. It resided in my parents' home for many years, but it came to me when we bought our last home in Maryland. I have a strong emotional connection to this table because I really loved my Bubbe, and I always think of childhood Passovers when I sit here. We junked the chairs that were with the set when we moved last summer...they were in terrible shape, they didn't really match the table (Bubbe and Zayde bought the chairs about 10 years after they bought the table 'cause they didn't like the chairs that came with the set originally), and we didn't like them. We're very happy with the chairs we bought to replace them, which actually DO match the table and look rather handsome besides. I enjoy sitting in this room eating my meals quite a lot. The windows allow me a peek at the backyards of some of our neighbors, so last summer I saw things like kids playing on a trampoline a few yards down and a family holding a backyard campout while I was eating dinner in here. The book on the table is Larousse Gastronomique, which my husband bought me as a birthday gift last November. I am reading it slowly front-to-back whenever I eat alone. I'm about 250 pages in so far and I've learned a lot already. I haven't cooked anything out of it yet, though. Speaking of food books, most of mine reside in a bookcase in the formal parlor attached to the dining room. Those are school notebooks and a few Foods of the World books on the lower left. I like that this bookcase resides on the ground level (all the other books are in the basement with our office and entertainment-center spaces, or in the guest bedroom). I often pluck a few off the shelf and browse at the dining room table or at the central kitchen island when I'm researching something or just plain bored. I never get tired of looking at cookbooks and wish I had the budget to buy a lot more of them!

I hadn't even thought about it until you brought it up! I don't think of that recipe as a secret, and it's unusual in that it's about the only recipe I've written that I thoroughly tested in over a dozen permutations before completion. I am not a methodical cook in this regard normally, but for the occasion of my culinary school final (when I developed the hush puppy recipe) I knew that the perfect pup was very important. I actually have about 4 bags of the homemade mix sitting in my pantry leftover from the last Varmint's Pig Pickin that need to be used...hmmmm. Might make an easy summer column. See, Katie, you never shoulda suggested such a terrible thing if you didn't want it to happen! For those wondering what all the hoopla is about, try this recipe and see for yourself.

Guess who woke up at 2am and couldn't get back to sleep? My feet are sore and I was hungry, besides. I ate another brownie from the Tuesday class and came down to the computer for a while. So, something I forgot to mention about last night's class is that I had a student who screwed something up. I asked her to zest 4 lemons for the lemon tart (3 for the filling, 1 for the pate sucree shell). She did so beautifully after I showed her how to use the microplane...and then she threw away the zest. (My mom did that once many years ago and has yet to live it down.) So, when I needed the zest, I asked my student where it was, and she said, "I threw it away." I said, "ha ha, no really, where's the zest?" And she looked like she was about to cry as she repeated, "I threw it away, I didn't realize you needed it." I mean she REALLY looked miserable. So I had to console her and tell her we'd make the most out of not having lemon zest (in an unusual move, I did not buy extra lemons at Wal*Mart). She was very quiet the rest of the class, and then I realized about 30 minutes later that she was gone completely from the classroom. Fortunately, her husband is taking the class with her, so I asked him where she was. He explained that their puppy was fixed today and she'd wanted to go home and check on him, so she'd left. I hate it when students don't tell me these things...I really thought she'd left because she was so upset about the zest incident. She'd only thrown it away a moment before I asked her for it, and we were able to rescue some of it since it was just sitting on top of some paper towels from handwashing that were in the trash...so it really wasn't a big deal. I did take the opportunity to explain what zest is and why it's yummy to the class, and when I saw how upset she was I was very gentle with her, but really the whole situation was pretty hilarious. She's never, ever gonna forget that experience. I told my husband about it when we retired last night and we shared a good chuckle over it.

So I'm back from tonight's class, and a little wrung-out. I went ahead and unloaded my car and unpacked everything (usually I leave the nonperishables in my car until the next morning) because I just wanted to be done with it. Besides, it's unseasonably warm and I knew it would be cooler tomorrow, ergo less pleasant to be messing about with junk in my vehicle. Class went well, though those who wanted to sample the soup and the tart had to stay a little late in order to do so. There was one major mishap: the mixers in the kitchen either don't work or else do a piss-poor job. I'm annoyed that this means schlepping my Kitchen-Aid in and out of that space for future classes involving pastry work (which is pretty much all of them). Everybody seemed to get a lot out of the stockmaking demo and discussion, which was what I was hoping would happen. I semi-joked that to me, the difference between somebody who dabbles and a serious cook is whether or not the person makes their own stock, and that seemed to drive home for them the importance of stockmaking in a single sentence. (After all, everybody wants ME to take them seriously! ) More detail, and some photos of the kitchens both at home and where I teach Thursdays, to follow tomorrow (unless I can't sleep again, in which case you might get them at 4am...sigh...).

I actually suggested bacon as an add-in to waffles in the waffle story I recently wrote for the Martinsburg Journal-News. Waffles with bacon AND cheese sound like a very good accompaniment to roasted chicken. Hmmmmm. Everything goes better with bacon! (Oh, and my name is Rochelle...I thought you were talking to Rachel Perlow at first!)

I was hanging onto them until I had more time to explicate, but here's a preview:

I'll try to look at that topic later, and weigh in if it's appropriate and I have something new to add. Sure, I can post the recipes I wrote up for my handouts. I usually write savory recipes without measurements because I want my students to learn how to judge proportions for themselves, though, so the recipes are not always easy to cook from if you weren't there to watch my demo. My pastry recipes almost always have measurements/weights. I did take one picture of Diana eating a snackie the other day. My cats are pretty camera-shy, but we'll see if I can get some more of them over the next few days. We have a constantly-circulating water filter for them since they like running water so much...

So, I'm nearly ready for tonight's class. The stock is working, I've packed all the nonperishables, and I have a list of perishables to make it quick and easy to load a cooler and pack it in the car. Unlike in Frederick, I am able to use the supplies in the kitchen I where I work in Jefferson County. However, this kitchen is not equipped with professional-grade equipment like the locked cabinet in Frederick is, so I often end up bringing things I consider basic like a scale or a big stockpot with me. Some of the things in that kitchen are of such poor quality that they're hard to work with, like the whisk I tried to use for whipping cream 2 weeks ago. Also, I can't leave anything at all at the Jefferson facility, so I end up schlepping things like salt and flour back and forth every week. Here's my pack list for tonight's class: Onions Carrots Celery Parsley Bay leaves Black peppercorns Thyme Chicken Butter Canned diced, peeled tomatoes Completed Chicken stock Salt and pepper Sugar Heavy whipping cream Eggs Lemons Crisco Vanilla Flour Stockpot Chinois China cap Spider Cambros Some deli cups Whisk Tart pan Scale Parchment And here's the class sequence: Cut mirepoix Assemble stock ingredients Start stock Pate sucree Strain and finish stock Tomato soup Lemon filling Eat and clean up I'm going to have to figure out how to get a big pot of stock to the classroom without tipping it over. I may end up transferring the contents to a Cambro that I can cover, and then putting them back in the pot when I arrive. (I have 2 stockpots, one of which currently has stock working, the other of which is clean and waiting in the car.)

I headed out for Martin's, a supermarket, earlier this afternoon to pick up a few items I need for the next few days. Martin's is owned by Royal Ahold, who also own Giant stores in the DC metro area. So, Martin's carries a lot of Giant store brand products. I did a lot of my food shopping at Giant when I lived in suburban Maryland, so Martin's quickly became my choice for nearby food shopping here in West Virginia. (The other options are the aforementioned Wal*Mart and a Food Lion store...and I don't like Food Lion much more than I like Wal*Mart, personally.) It's a decent-sized market. The Martin's in Martinsburg, WV is much nicer, and I often stop there on my way home from my midwifery appointments. (I go to a practice with 6 midwives and 3 OB-Gyns in Martinsburg, WV, and I plan to give birth at City Hospital of Martinsburg.) Here's what I bought: Some ground turkey on sale, Diet Rite Tangerine for my husband (also on sale...he is very fond of soda), a new scrub brush for the sink because my other one is a bit manky, tomato juice and lemonade for Mom who really loves both beverages, mayo, russet potatoes and tater tots. Also, pears, what were labeled as "yams," asparagus, organic herb salad mesclun, cukes, a red bell pepper, and some horseradish root. I came home and cut up veg for the first batch of chicken stock. Often, with my classes, I have to prepare something in advance and then start a new batch in the classroom...sort of like how on cooking shows they show you how to make something and then, voila, they pull a completed version out of the oven. I had to make ganache on Monday to take to my Tuesday class, and now I'm making chicken stock to take to tonight's class. I just checked and skimmed it and it is almost at the boil. I have a "power burner" which is great for getting these sorts of things going, and then a "simmer burner" which is great for keeping stocks going on low low heat. Meanwhile, I was hungry, so I heated up some of these for lunch: I also fixed myself a small salad, lest you think I never consume anything cruciferous. I washed it down with about a liter of water. I drink minimum 2 liters of water a day. Right now, I'm going to go write a pack list and class sequence for tonight's class, and then start packing up things to take.

I had the idea that pre-freezing (or semi-freezing) would lead to a streaky, bloomed chocolate coating. Have you personally done this with success? And did your chocolate bloom like I thought it might? (FWIW, I was worried about blooming from just using cold cheesecake squares.)

Back when I was a vegetarian many moons ago, I didn't freeze a lot of meals. I did ingredients: cooked beans that I'd soaked from dry, vegetarian stock, pasta sauce. I also made vegetarian chili and soups like mushroom-barley for the freezer, along with the inevitable meatless lasagna. I tried pouring the chocolate on the cheesecake squares, but it didn't work much better. I ended up using a combination of pouring and moving the squares around a puddle of chocolate in my hand. I think having a more sturdy cheesecake is really the solution if I decide to try this again...I had a hard time just picking it up in one piece, much less coating it.

Yes, people commute from here to Washington from my neighborhood every day! People also commute to other suburbs, especially Frederick, MD and Loudoun County, VA. (Frederick is home to Ft Detrick, and there are several military types in my hood who work there...including my next-door neighbor. Loudoun County is a major technology center, with major companies including the old AOL HQ.) There is a MARC station (Maryland rail transit) about 2 miles from my home so you can even take the train into the city every day, or to a Maryland suburb if you work there. Housing is significantly cheaper in Jefferson County, WV than it is over the border in Maryland or Virginia, partly because tax rates are rock-bottom in all of WV. I live about 3 miles from Loudoun County and about 5 miles from the Maryland state line. I go to DC every other month or so to do stuff (especially dining, which is not so great out here, or visiting with friends), but for food specialty items I actually do better in Rockville, MD or out in Sterling, VA where there are Asian and other ethnic markets, places like Wegman's or Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, and of course my beloved Costco. (Though I usually hit Costco in Frederick...it's the closest location, and unlike the Sterling, VA or Gaithersburg, MD locations, it's not insanely crowded.)

Here's some images from last night's culinary hijinks. Dinner was dry-rubbed ribs, baked slowly in a cool oven, and some coleslaw. We're big rib fans around here, and the dry-rub means they're very low in carbs. (BBQ sauces are usually very sweet, and IMO they really need things like molasses in them--Splenda just doesn't cut it for that sort of thing.) If there wasn't snow on the ground I might have slow-grilled rather than slow-baking them, but I'm not as tough as Dave, Marlene or especially Snowangel in that regard. The dry rub contains all kinds of stuff...paprika, cumin, salt, a small amount of sugar, and a bunch of other spices I can't recall offhand. I prepared two racks last night because that's how the ribs came from Costco (these were simple pork spareribs, which Costco only sells as 2 racks cryo'ed together). They'll get eaten in short order, but if not I can always freeze some. I've never done two racks in one pan like this before, but with some periodic rotating it worked out just fine. Before: After: I made a typical slaw to go with. I forgot to take a pic of the finished slaw, but here's the MEP: I also added salt and a little Splenda for sweetness. The vinegar came back from Paris with us a little over a year ago, it's a great Normandy apple cider vinegar that I purchased at Hediard. The rest of last night's culinary messing-about had several class-related themes: 1. I've been baking like a fiend lately to use up the 5 dozen eggs we barely touched in class 2 weeks ago tonight. Also, I've been in the mood to bake. 2. There's only so much warm ganache people can use in a class. 3. Nobody seemed that into taking home leftover chocolate Tuesday night. Also, there is this very nice lady who is throwing me a baby shower this Saturday, with some help from my close friend Abi. This lady is the spouse of another faculty member in my husband's dept at Shepherd U, and she offered to throw me this shower before she even met me in person, as a way to welcome us to the area. Wow! I feel like I should do something nice for her by way of thanking her for all this effort for a near-total-stranger. So, I made some truffles with leftover ganache and dark chocolate last night, and I picked up a gift card to Borders while I was in Frederick yesterday. (She homeschools her two kids, so I figure if she can't think of a book for herself she has a million she wants to buy her children.) Here's the centers and the chopped assorted dark chocolates from Tuesday's class: Here's all the MEP for the truffles: empty parchmented half-sheet for the finished product, powdered sugar and a sugar-cocoa powder blend for rolling the truffles in, centers, and melted chocolate. I just did a simple sort of truffle here...putting melted chocolate on my hand, rolling a center until coated, and then rolling the wet truffle in one or the other powder mixture to coat. This way I didn't have to temper my chocolate. The finished truffles went onto the half-sheet and set out overnight to set up. I'll package them up later this morning. Finally, my mom is coming up Friday for the weekend to hang out, escape taking care of my grandfather for a couple days, and especially attend the shower Saturday. So I'll be making us dinner Friday night. We need a dessert, right? I made a cheesecake a few days ago, from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Cake Bible...I forgot to add an ENTIRE POUND of sour cream, but the cake came out okay anyway. So, per Sugarella's suggestion in a Pastry and Baking thread, I decided to cut it into pieces and coat them with chocolate. The cheesecake fell apart rather easily and was very hard to coat, even though I tried to work quickly. The end result doesn't look so hot, but who cares...it tastes great and it's just for me and Mom, right? I'll pretty up the plates with some berries and whipped cream or something when I serve these. They're residing in the freezer until then. I don't pretend I'm a pastry chef, and I don't get worked up when dessert-y things don't look as nice as I hoped as a result.

Yes, Rachel, as I said above, I use the Fat-Guy method for chicken stock--complete with yanking out the chicken when it is cooked and stripping off the meat. Otherwise, IMO there's no real reason to use whole chickens. For those of you who want more detail on this method, check out the eGCI Stocks and Sauces class.

I actually have all those things on hand. I even have some fresh herbs leftover from another class, including some thyme that I'll add to the stock and probably the soup as well. I bought parsley yesterday.