eG Foodblog: MelissaH and phaelon56 - Salt Potatoes and Onions, but n

[Megan Blocker]

Ooooh, Byrne Dairy! I went to college with two of the Byrnes...small, small world!

Excellent blog thus far, folks.

[phaelon56]

Sorry I've been absent today but have been seriously under the weather. I did manage to roast coffee, open the shop and put in a half-day at the office before collapsing but tomorrow should be back in the saddle. I attempted to visit our conveyor style sushi restaurant this evening but they just resumed their "half-price on Tuesdays" promotion and the line was already out the door at 6 PM with a long wait. But my Plan B was take-out and very tasty - photos tomorrow.

Answers to questions... some of which I saw and at least one I thought I saw....

Dinner and drinks in Syracuse for 20/30 something group of lively women:

I stand by my recommendation of Ambrosia as a choice that should satisfy all.

The bowl with the potatoes:

It says "Continental International Corp. - Made In Portugal" on the bottom. Hard to believe but it dates to 1952 and has only been used a few times. A couple years back my mom pulled it out of the closet and suggested that I mighty get more use from it than she has. It was still in the original E.W. Edwards Department Store box and was a wedding gift that she never got around to using!

The wooden spatula / spoon:

Yes it's my favorite and although I have a few others they rarely get used. This one feels like it's an extension of my hand and works in my non-stick saute pan, stainless cookware and everything else I subject it to. Plastic shmastic - give me wood.

[MelissaH]

Dinner tonight:

It started with that giant head of cabbage. The knife is my 8-inch Henckels chef's knife, the first good knife I ever bought myself.

Or, rather, half of it because it was so huge. I quartered the head, cored the four quarters, put two of the quarters in a plastic bag and then into the fridge, and sliced the other two quarters into strips. The strips went into a colander, and the colander got set into the sink. I tossed the cabbage with a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt, set a plate on top, and then put my filled kettle on top of the plate to press out as much water as I could in about an hour.

After about an hour, I rinsed the salt off, put my largest-diameter pan on the stove, turned the heat on to medium lowish, and added (to me) an unconscionable amount of butter, about half a stick. Once the butter was mostly melted and bubbling, I shook as much water out of the cabbage as I could, and added it to the pan. I gave it a good toss, and it started to crackle and pop from the remaining water.

When the crackling died down, the bottom started to brown. At that point, I turned down the heat and let it cook for about another half hour, tossing it every so often. In the meantime, I put a pot of water on to boil, and used the boiling water to cook about half a pound of fusilli. I know that egg noodles would be traditional with cabbage if you're Eastern European, but I don't have any and I like the way the cabbage shreds get tangled into the spring shape.

Once the pasta was cooked, I dumped it into the cabbage, and mixed it all together.

Dinner is served! Tonight's salad is a couple of the green zebra tomatoes, chunked up, along with some of the yellow pear tomatoes, halved, with some freshly ground black pepper and a drizzle of cheapo balsamic vinegar that I reduced to a syrup, put into an old maple syrup bottle that pours nicely, and store in the fridge.

Tomorrow, I go down to the Big City to run still more errands.

MelissaH

[phaelon56]

Today was a typical day - up at 4 AM or 5 AM or as late as 5:30 and then off to roast or on some days just open the shop. I am a two hour per day barista, a coffee roaster and a competent (just barely) espresso machine emergency repair guy for a local cafe chain consisting of four stores.

First my morning cappa at home to be drunk in the car on my ten minute drive to the shop

I bought some Streamline blend at Victrola when I was in Seattle for Labor Day weekend. It's likely the smoothest espresso I have ever had but it does not hold up to more than 3 parts milk to 1 part espresso. I like it best in a machiatto but the six oz. cappa is my morning standard.

You'll notice some espresso splashing onto the sides of the cup - Naked Portafilter Extraction Problem.

Some days my latte art is better than others. Today it was "interpretive".

Open the shop at 6:15 AM

Roasted some coffee before opening the doors. A small day is 70 lbs ( a fill in of 2 batches) and a big roast is over 300 lbs (about 12 batches - that happens twice each week on average).

Every six to eight batches I have to dump the five gallon chaff bucket. Chaff is a pale filmy skin that comes off the beans when they roast.

On rare occasion I find weird things in the green beans - usually just corn or rocks or a small nail but last week it was this coconut shell all the way from Papua new Guinea.

Here come Tom for his mondo sized Organic - just like every morning.

http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11895255...5127_195174.jpg

And Frank insists that I have a shot of espresso with him - every morning. I gladly oblige.

It's late (for me) - see you all tomorrow!

[MarketStEl]

Checking in late to this blog. My first question is geographical:

How far is Ithaca from Syracuse?

Cornell is one of only two Ivy League schools I've never even visited -- the other is Dartmouth. I attended one Ivy, visited either classmates from my school or other schools in Kansas City at four others, and got hired at a sixth. As close as I got to Cornell was a chat with a Cornell HR recruiter at an NAACP job fair during my un/self-employed period (2004-06), after leaving that sixth Ivy.

I understand that "Ithaca is gorges!" Will we see any?

And here is today's lunch - partially consisting of leftovers from tonight's (actually yesterday's) dinner.

Most days I eat a better lunch than this but leaving my desk wasn't an option today.

There are better lunches than that? Bigger, yes; more adventurous, yes; better? I don't think so.

  The tomato-cuke salad was still really good and very few things are tastier on Triscuits or Wheat Thins than 4X cheddar cheese.  This is the Canadian Black Diamond brand - available at our local Sam's Club. 

It's not just the increased sharpness that I enjoy in the long aged cheddars - there's a much better texture as well. They get sort of crumbly and have a way of almost melting on your tongue as you eat the little hunks.  It's radically different (to me) than 2X cheddar - worth seeking out and worth the nominal extra cost ($10 per pound versus $4 to $7 per pound for lesser domestic cheddars). It even makes vastly superior grilled cheese sandwiches.

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Okay, I'm a cheesehead, and I haven't yet heard (down this way) these multiples applied to Cheddar. I assume they refer to degree of sharpness (and by extension time spent aging)? What distinguishes 4X from 2X? Is there a 3X? Are there higher multiples?

And since this is a New York State blog, what are your picks for great New York State cheddars? And should those not make it across the Pennsylvania border, any preferences among the supermarket varieties, if you have any at all? (My go-to cheap Cheddar is the A&P (in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, Super Fresh) store brand, America's Choice New York Extra Sharp. Edited to add: Well, let me revise that -- it was my go-to cheap Cheddar until Tillamook started popping up on store shelves here.)

I'll have to try that fish sauce-in-salad dressing thingie you do. (It'll be the only way I can get rid of a bottle I bought about a year ago; both partner and roomie must limit their sodium intake, and fish sauce has a ton of it.) About how much fish sauce would you add to, say, a cup of vinaigrette?

Today was a typical day - up at 4 AM or 5 AM or as late as 5:30 and then off to roast or on some days just open the shop.  I am a two hour per day barista, a coffee roaster and a competent (just barely) espresso machine emergency repair guy for a local cafe chain consisting of four stores.

[...cool coffee porn deleted...]

Open the shop at 6:15 AM

Do I get to groan at the pun?

Someone mentioned Wegmans. People down this way wax rhapsodic about the place. Do people react the same way in its home region?

Edited September 12, 2007 by MarketStEl (log)

[MelissaH]

Good morning, everyone! Breakfast: yummy cereal, again. If it stays chilly, that may change tomorrow.

We had rather a blustery night last night. At about midnight, we had some thunder and lightning, and it rained on and off throughout the night. And this morning, we're getting some lake effect. No snow, but lake effect rain! (Same idea as lake effect snow: cold wind blowing over the warm lake, then crashing into land and letting go of the moisture.) When I looked at the NWS radar this morning, I saw a beautiful plume of echoes streaming off the lake.

The skies here are cloudy and gray, no sun to be found anywhere. It's really this dark and ominous-looking.

The 10-minute average wind speed now is 27 mph, and we've had gusts up to 46 mph. This is also not unusual for us, as the wind howls off the lake.

I'll be heading down to Syracuse in a little while, to run a bunch of errands and have lunch with Owen. I'll try to remember to get an outdoor shot down there so you can see the difference 50 miles can make.

To answer a peripheral question to the one Sandy asked: it's about two hours, or 75 miles, from Ithaca to Oswego, pretty much a straight shot up NY-34. We go to Ithaca only infrequently, and only during the summer. Our main purpose in going there is to eat ice cream from the Cornell dairy. We've occasionally caught the Ithaca farmer's market, but the only vendors of interest to us are the cheesemakers. Everything else, we can get for less $$$ at our own farmer's market.

MelissaH

[phaelon56]

Don't know about the rest of you but I'm really diggin' Melissa's gas range. And it appears that they eat better there than I do at my house

Is that the brand that comes in a plastic package, with kind of scripty writing on it? We see that brand at the Price Chopper in Oswego.

Yes - white plastic package and script writing. It's really good. I used to by my cured chorizo in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood when I lived in NJ and this is as good as the stuff Seabra's Market sells from their meat case.

What distinguishes 4X from 2X? Is there a 3X? Are there higher multiples?

4X = aged four years or more, 2X = aged 2 years or more. Most generic grocery store cheddar is aged either less than 12 months (in which case it is not labeled as to aging) or is 1X or 2X. Back when he was still able to make fishing trips my dad used to buy cheese at a small cheese factory in Harrowsmith Ontario (Canada - north of Kingston). They had a cheddar labeled as "Medieval" - which amused him greatly as he is a history buff. Tasted like 4X to me.

And since this is a New York State blog, what are your picks for great New York State cheddars?

For one you can readily find in grocery stores I think Heluva Good Cheese is a good bet but the Black Diamond 4X is way better than Heluva's "Fisherman's X-tra Sharp (which I think is a 3X).

Colosse is the other independent brand that is decent. Colosse also sells a product called "washed curd cheese" which is less expensive than the longer aged cheddars but has similar sharpness (but the texture is not as good).

In all cases it's crucial to allow the cheese to warm up to just below room temp before consuming as the sharpness is enhanced and the texture improves.

Buttercup dairy is a small independent outfit that sells at our local regional market (a commercial produce market during the week and a retail operation on Saturday morning). They actually sell a 5X and a 10X (yes - aged 5 and 10 years!). They source from Cuba Cheese in Cuba NY and then age it themselves. I think the Cuba Cheese 3 yr Aged NYS Cheddar is excellent - perhaps the best exam0ple iof NY cheddar that I have tried.

About how much fish sauce would you add to, say, a cup of vinaigrette?

I'd start with about 1 tbsp and then adjust to taste. It dep3ends on how sharp your vinegar is. I tend to use relatively sweet Asian vinegar but that's just my taste.

How far is Ithaca from Syracuse?

About 60 miles and for me - one hour of driving time on the "back route". Most would estimate about 1 hr and 10 minutes to drive it.

I understand that "Ithaca is gorges!" Will we see any?

It's possible. My base is Syracuse but I began visiting Ithaca regularly in the early 1970's when I was still in high school. Back then the dining scene and the cultural offerings were better or at least more eclectic in Ithaca than in Syracuse. I eventually went to work for Cornell as a department manager in the Cornell Store and lived in Ithaca from 1991 through 1995. And I still visit there regularly.

Gorge pictures later.

[Megan Blocker]

Oh, wow, Owen...that coffee photo extravaganza has me craving an espresso. I'm off caffeine (coming down with a cold), and now it's all I can think about!

[phaelon56]

Gorges:

Waterfalls: (this is Taughannock Falls - I think there is a scrupulously observed unwritten law that all visitors to Ithaca must either go to the falls or be taken there by someone)

Carriage House Cafe - across the street from the Chapter House. Co-manager Chris Deferio established and runs the coffee/espresso part of this business. He is a North American Latte Art Champion and a finalist in multiple years in the North American Barista Championships (I believe he placed third this year). He's also a very nice guy who happens to be from my hometown.

Carriage House is one of the very few (possibly the only) restaurant I know of where you can have a quality meal and get absolutely stellar world class espresso drinks after dinner. And they bake killer baguettes on premises. The machiatto pictured is served in a tall demitasse with no handles. I believe it's a sake cup and the aesthetic is lovely - as is the drinking experience.

[Kouign Aman]

Sharp, sharper, sharpest. Sliced very very thinly, eaten with glee and few distractions. My dad taught us to love sharp cheeses. (He likes the slices thicker than I do. We both like the crumbling.) We'll both just open a block of cheese, sit with a sharp knife, and pare away happily.

Buttercup dairy is a small independent outfit that sells at our local regional market (a commercial produce market during the week and a retail operation on Saturday morning). They actually sell a 5X and a 10X (yes - aged 5 and 10 years!).

Holy cow. That might just send me on a mission one of these days. I wonder if they ship. Dad's 70th birthday is coming up.

editted for coherence.

[sanrensho]

Tomatoes from my very own garden along with cukes from the grocery store, purple garlic from the Ithaca Farmers Market, red onion, fresh lime juice, white pepper, rice salad vinegar, Asian fish sauce (the one with the fat baby on the label) and a bit of nice fruity Sicilian olive oil.  I'll use the same sauce - sans garlic - later this week for a very colorful salad of a different type.

Good call. My "change of pace" salad dressing (as an alternative to standard vinaigrette) is a light drizzle of sesame oil, a few good shots of fish sauce, pepper and freshly squeezed lime juice. And some cilantro if I have some lying around.

[racheld]

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This is The FUDGE Stirrer. It gets quite a workout during the weeks leading up to Christmas, and is in constant use the rest of the year, as well. It's so much more effective than a mere spoon for completely clearing the bottom of the heavy-bottom pan (The FUDGE Pan, of course), than just scritching a hairline with a spoontip, no matter how hard or faithfully you stir as it cooks.

I loved the waterfalls, and envy your proximity to a lake---those big guys give the next best thing to a Gulf tide, and I'm SO homesick to hear it.

And by happenstance, our own dinner last night was shredded cabbage stir-fried for a moment in olive oil, then dressed with garlic, a few glugs from the light soy sauce bottle and three drops of sesame oil, then left to steam for about three minutes under a lid. Our pasta inclusion was some tri-color farfalle, bought just this weekend for prospective vegan houseguests (as was the dish planned for them) but they had to leave earlier than planned, and will be back this way end of the month.

This is a lovely, comfort-food dish, and we had ours with a kidney-bean salad with minced Vidalias, three colors of bell pepper, and a splash of juice from the dill-pickle jar. And some of the last tomatoes---our garden, alas, fell prey to the rainless days of August and my own inability to get out there and care for it properly. The guys cleaned and tilled and smoothed it away this past Monday, and this rack of tomatoes (plus lots of green beans, etc., in the freezers) are all that's left til Spring promises.

And your Coffee-Scented Days!!! I could almost smell the screen.

[MelissaH]

Whew!

Today's errands made for a very long day, and it's not over yet.

As I left Oswego, it was raining quite hard. By the time I got to Fulton, 10 miles south, the rain was no longer coming down but the road was covered with puddles. By Phoenix (another 7 miles on), I needed to dig out the sunglasses that live in the car. And in Syracuse, it was actually quite warm in the sun!

My first stop was at Home Depot. Before I left, I measured my oven rack, because I wanted to get quarry tiles to fit. I had some, but they were sized for the oven-before-the-last, which was tiny. Because I'm still not convinced the weather will cooperate for grilling tomorrow's pizzas, I want to be sure I can cook multiple pizzas at a time, which means I need a full rack's worth of tiles. I would have liked to have gotten the tiles locally, but the Lowe's here doesn't have anything unglazed.

I found the tiles, which looked exactly like mine did when they were new and clean. And I discovered that I should be able to fit 4 rows of tiles across, and 2.5 rows of tiles deep, on one rack. Therefore, I needed a total of 10 tiles, two of which needed to be halved. It just so happened that while I was there, the flooring section had one person working and about a dozen groups of people needing her attention. Who knew that a Wednesday morning would be so busy? So instead of scoring and snapping the tiles herself, she sent me to the tool rental area. And the person working there actually got out the tile wetsaw and cut the tiles rather than just snapping them. Total cost, including tax: $3.24. That's hard to beat!

Then some rather boring stuff, not at all related to food, and finally, to lunch! I met Owen at Ponchito's Taqueria, which was in a section of Syracuse I'd never visited before.

I had a burrito, and he got a taco with chips and guacamole. The chips and guac were excellent. My burrito was waaay better than what I can get in Oswego at Fajita Grill (which people here rave about because they don't have much to compare to), but not up to the standard set by Big City Burrito in Fort Collins, CO. The salsa was nice, I could actually taste things other than black pepper or HOT!, and the burrito was nicely stuffed and rolled, and I liked that they used whole chunks of chicken, which they cut into smaller pieces only when I ordered. But I still miss the texture in the corn salsas that Chipotle and Big City make. If I were in the area, I'd go back there, but I don't know that I'd go out of my way to eat there.

Then, I went to the Knitting Connection, another yarn store, because I was in the area and their yarn selection is different from what North Wind typically has. This errand actually became food-related when I looked at their selection of sock yarn: the latest thing is, apparently, a yarn that's made partly from soy and chitin (from shrimp shells!) fibers. It felt nice, but I wasn't in the mood to spend that much on sock yarn that I'm not going to get to for a while because I have too many other projects in the queue.

Finally, my last stop was at Wegman's. The store I went to is the Syracuse area flagship store, but it's been under renovation and expansion for a while, and is not expected to be completed till at least mid-November. Things move around every time I visit, which makes it difficult to find what I'm looking for, but the produce is still nice-looking and beautifully displayed, and they (as always) make a point of labeling things that are grown locally. The workers still look happy to be working there. I bother to go there because it's so much nicer than the local supermarkets in Oswego. But more about them later, when I have more time: maybe Friday?

I got what I went for, and nothing that wasn't on my list other than a Coke Zero to drink as I drove home. And when I got home, this was the view after I unloaded the car:

What a difference a few hours makes!

Tonight's a bit crazy: we have concert tickets! Oswego has a vibrant arts scene, largely due to the college but other groups also help. Tonight is a chamber music concert featuring the music of Francis Poulenc and Benjamin Britten, performed by some of our music professors with some guest artists. I'm looking forward to the music.

If I have enough time before the concert, I'll try to start prepping some of tomorrow's dinner. The grapes from yesterday need to be made into sorbet base and chilled well, and the pizza dough needs to be made either tonight or first thing tomorrow. I forgot to get half-and-half, but fortunately the peanut butter ice cream base doesn't involve eggs and doesn't get cooked, so that can easily be both blended and chilled tomorrow. Once those are done, all that's left will be a bunch of chopping and slicing, which is pretty easy to handle.

MelissaH

Casey just got home, and I hear him loading the dishwasher. This means I need to see what's up. I suspect tonight's dinner will be yummy leftovers. Now that I think about it, I realize the pork and gravy from the crockpot will go nicely with the cabbage and noodles from yesterday!

[MelissaH]

Good morning, and happy new year!

My breakfast this morning actually started last night. I gathered my ingredients:

two cups of water, a pinch of salt, and half a cup of steel-cut oats. The water and salt went on the stove to come to a boil. When that happened, I added the oats (slowly, because if you don't it boils over and you get to clean your stove), stirred everything together well,

and then put the lid on the pot and set it aside overnight. (I'm almost ashamed to admit that I learned this method of oatmeal cooking from Martha Stewart, but I'm not a huge fan of quicker-cooking oatmeal, because the texture goes completely to mush. The steel-cut oats retain some texture and chew, but if you don't start them the night before, they need to simmer for something like half an hour in the morning. I don't know about you, but I'm generally too hungry to wait that long, nor am I awake enough to do that much active cooking before breakfast!)

In the morning, this is what it looks like:

But like any good pet owner, before tending to myself, I fed my animals. Our boys have dry food out all the time. Lyon loves eating dry food.

But they also share one can of wet food each day, half a can in the morning and half a can at dinnertime. Their only option nowadays is

Friskies Special Diet, with chicken in sauce. Last year, Lyon had a bout of feline lower urinary tract disease, so we've had to put the boys on food that's specifically formulated to keep urine pH low (meaning acidic). Of the flavors that come in Special Diet, the chicken in sauce is the only one they'll eat. We tried all the others. We consider ourselves fortunate that this brand of food is doing the trick, and we don't need to go to a more expensive or less available cat food. I just wish that something existed for both urinary tract health and hairball reduction!

With the cats both happily eating (or rather, licking off all the sauce for now, and saving most of the chunks to come back for later), I was able to turn my attention to my breakfast. Once the steel-cut oats have sat overnight, they only need to be heated to be ready. I learned the hard way to do this on fairly low heat, because the oats have absorbed enough of the water to be capable of scorching. I also learned that I need to be extra-careful since we got the new range that goes to 11, or something like that: if a recipe says "medium" I start at medium-low. I like having firepower! I heat the oatmeal till it's boiling, because once that happens I know the starch in the oatmeal has been heated enough to become creamy throughout.

Wonderful as this oatmeal is, I like my oatmeal with stuff.

Today's "stuff" is maple syrup (grade B) and yogurt, with a seltzer and OJ chaser. (We're out of limeade.) I got this yogurt yesterday at Wegman's. We'd seen it there before, but this is the first time I'd tried it. It's from a nearby farm. I had my choice of plain or vanilla, and decided to go with plain. There was, in fact, a layer of cream on top of the yogurt when I opened it, but I couldn't get a photo that showed it. The yogurt has a nice flavor, not too sour, and a wonderful creamy texture. I'm thinking of all the wonderful things I can do with this yogurt, besides just eating it with fruit, or honey, or maple syrup and oatmeal. Mango lassi, anyone? Frozen yogurt? Yogurt cake? Dolloped onto pie? Eaten with chocolate graham crackers crumbled into it?

Breakfast is served!

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

Now, back to last night.

I had just enough time before the concert to make up my pizza dough. I started by gathering all my ingredients together: flour (King Arthur all-purpose, in the yellow-lidded container), water (yes, that's the kettle I used to weight the cabbage; I keep water in it so I have room-temperature water available), sugar (in the smaller container in the back), olive oil, yeast (SAF instant, in the blue-green jar), and salt (Diamond Crystal kosher, in the clear jar). My scale is a small Ohaus scientific balance, which does both English and metric measurements. I got it before home cooks weighed much, and therefore before home scales became cheap and readily available. The KitchenAid mixer is dark blue because the year my mom asked me if I wanted one for my birthday, the dark blue one was on sale and much less expensive than the others. I don't mind the dark blue, but it does show every grain of flour. The thing on top of my flour container is a dough whisk. I use it to get everything mixed together before I attach the bowl to the mixer. I like to start this way because when I combine ingredients by hand, I get less flour puffling through the kitchen and onto the mixer. Once wet and dry are combined, I can put the bowl into the mixer and use the dough hook to take care of the rest.

I also got out an apron, because I knew I wouldn't have time to change into "play clothes" to cook, and get back into my nicer clothes again before the concert. I'm not normally an apron-wearer, but I keep some around for dealing with stuff that stains or for clothing challenges. This particular apron was a gift from my mother-in-law, who is well aware of my proclivities for opening my mouth.

This dough was made following the recipe for grilled pizza dough from Peter Reinhard's American Pie. I started by weighing out 1 pound, 6.5 ounces of flour. The cookbook called for 22 1/2 ounces of flour. Does anyone out there actually have a scale that says 22 1/2 ounces of flour, rather than 1 pound 6.5 ounces? The flour is also the only ingredient given by mass, which I find odd.

To the flour, I added the rest of the dry ingredients (1 Tbsp sugar, 3 tsp salt, 1 tsp yeast)

and gave them a stir with the dough whisk to combine. I then added 1.5 tsp olive oil, and the water. The cookbook called for 1 3/4 cups of water. I put the bowl back on my scale, tared it, and added 14 ounces of water. Everything went back in its place after I added it, except the olive oil.

After using the dough whisk to get all the dry stuff wet,

I put the bowl onto the mixer, and mixed at low speed for 4 minutes. The dough got a 15-minute rest, during which I ate the leftover cabbage and noodles for dinner, and then the dough went for another 4 minute spin at a slightly higher speed. While the dough finished mixing, I got out and opened six ziplock sandwich bags and a loaf pan. I also took the cap off the oil bottle.

From here on out, I had a hard time taking pictures because my hands were gunked with dough, and I didn't want to get the camera messy. But at the end of the second mixing period, the dough windowpaned nicely. I took the bowl off the mixer, set my scale to metric, pulled the dough out of the bowl, put the empty bowl onto the scale and hit the tare button, and then put the dough back into the bowl to get the mass of just the dough. I did all this because I wanted to have a decent shot at dividing the dough into 6 equal pieces. I yelled downstairs to my husband to do the arithmetic, because my hands were dough-gunked, and he yelled back that I'd need each piece to have a mass of 178.33333...... grams. I figured that if I got each of the six pieces to be 180 grams, plus or minus 5 grams, that I'd be close enough for a family dinner.

I started by eyeballing the dough and cutting it in half, and then dividing each half in thirds. Each piece then went into the tared bowl on the scale, so I could see which ones were too big and which ones were too small. I made adjustments as necessary. In the end, I got six pieces of dough that were all pretty darn close to the same mass. I rounded them into balls

and then things got really messy as I poured a little oil onto my hand, picked up a dough ball and fondled it to give it an oily coating, slid the oily dough ball into its own ziplock, and then put the ziplock in the loaf pan for easy containment. When all six dough balls were bagged and panned, I washed my hands so I could grab the oil bottle without it slithering free, and poured a little oil over each ball in its bag. Then I could put the oil away. Finally, I sealed each bag, pressing out as much air as I could.

Although the recipe said to leave the dough at room temperature for half an hour, it was time to leave for the concert. So I just slid the pan into the refrigerator, where it quietly reposes still. I took off my apron, put on a jacket, and we walked to campus for some music.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

The concert was wonderful. We heard music by Poulenc and Britten, for solo piano; horn and piano; tenor, horn, and piano; mezzo-soprano and piano; and mezzo, tenor, and piano. My favorite of the evening was a song by Poulenc, one of a group of poems by Careme that Poulenc found, put together, and set to music. The mezzo told us about the first of the songs being a mother's lament that her child refused to sleep, and the rest of the songs were her version of Scheherazade. By the end of the last song, you could practically hear her quietly leaving the child's room as he finally slept. The song I particularly liked was the sixth in this set, about the Thursday angels who play Mozart on their harps.

The very last song of the evening was somewhat food-related, and very appropriate to these parts at this time of year. Britten took some folk songs, and used the words and tunes to write his own settings. The last of these folk songs was an audience sing-along! The tenor would sing the first part of the verse, and everyone else including the audience added the "Hee haw" part:

Oliver Cromwell lay buried and dead,

Hee-haw, buried and dead,

Thy planted an apple tree over his head,

Hee-haw, over his head.

The apples were ripe and ready to fall,

Hee-haw, ready to fall,

There came an old woman to gather them all,

Hee-haw, gather them all.

Oliver rose and gave her a drop,

Hee-haw, gave her a drop,

Which made the old woman go hippety hop,

Hee-haw, hippety hop.

The saddle and bridle, they lie on the shelf,

Hee-haw, lie on the shelf,

If you want any more your can sing it yourself,

Hee-haw, sing it yourself.

It was lots of fun. We walked home, and I went back to work because I had sorbet base to prepare! First, though, I changed my clothes because I had grapes to deal with. I also put an apron on, for good measure. First thing was to give the Concord grapes I'd gotten on Tuesday a rinse.

Then, the grapes needed to be pulled off the stem, and because Concord grapes have thick skins I needed to at least nick the skin of each grape. There are a lot of grapes in 3.5 pounds!

I added 40 g of water to the grapes and set them on the stove. They cooked on medium-low heat, covered. The kitchen smelled like a brand-new jar of grape jam while I cooked them, and I periodically got the pleasure of taking the lid off the pot and sticking my nose in to inhale, when I stirred the grapes. Finally, the grapes were all cooked and soft. I took them off the heat and let them cool a little bit as I assembled my food mill.

The food mill is a marvelous invention. I couldn't imagine trying to do push all this through a sieve. But my food mill was just barely large enough to hold all the grapes, and they splashed a little bit as I poured them from pot to mill. Then, as I milled the grapes, they splattered a little more. Before I did anything else, I cleaned the purple splatters off the kitchen before they could set and become permanent purple polkadots. Then I used my spatula to scrape the pulp from the bottom of the food mill disk, took this picture, and cleaned up.

The milled grapes were still pretty warm, so the corn syrup (I started by measuring out 1/4 cup as the recipe prescribed, but I only added half of it to the grapes. I tasted the mixture, and it tasted like it needed more so I added the rest) mixed in nicely. I also added a splash of vodka. I didn't want to put such a hot bowl into my refrigerator, so I stayed up a little while longer waiting for it to cool, and finding more purple splatters to clean up. Finally, shortly after midnight, the outside of the bowl was no longer hot, and I put my silicone trivet on the fridge shelf for the bowl. And now you know why I slept in so late this morning!

Casey's finished cleaning and re-sealing the floor, and I see he's moved the cardboard barrier so I can go back into the kitchen to rinse out my breakfast glass and start caramelizing onions to go on pizza tonight.

MelissaH

[Jensen]

and then put the lid on the pot and set it aside overnight. (I'm almost ashamed to admit that I learned this method of oatmeal cooking from Martha Stewart,

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Fortunately, I'll be able to say "Oh, I learned how to cook my oatmeal this way from one of the blogs on eGullet..."

I'll give it a try tonight!

[Pille]

My breakfast this morning actually started last night. I gathered my ingredients:

I LOVE that oatmeal (and its tin ) - that's one of my favourites, too!

[insomniac]

My breakfast this morning actually started last night. I gathered my ingredients:

I LOVE that oatmeal (and its tin ) - that's one of my favourites, too!

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my oatmeal too, once tried you will never return to the quick stuff

[MelissaH]

I LOVE that oatmeal (and its tin  ) - that's one of my favourites, too!

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I actually don't often buy the brand in the tin, because I've had problems with previous tins costing a fortune and being rancid straight out of the tin for the first serving. When I'm in a city with a Trader Joe's, I get their brand in the cardboard cylinder. It's less expensive and they seem to get decent turnover and therefore no rancidity issues. I got this particular container over Labor Day weekend, when we were up close to Sault Ste. Marie, MI. I was thrilled to be able to find good oatmeal at the Soo, but not thrilled at what I had to pay for it.

MelissaH

[MarketStEl]

Leave it to me to look at this picture:

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and get all historical-trivial on everyone.

Products displaying awards and endorsements have been and will always be with us: Britons are long used to seeing royal warrants with the legend "By appointment to HM the Queen" on products, perhaps the ultimate in celebrity endorsements. And there's an organization devoted to bestowing "Best Taste" awards on scores of name-brand commercial products. (I've long wondered who funds this organization: it had to change its name to avoid confusion with one of America's premier culinary schools.)

I guess that with the demise of "World's Fairs" as showcases for global commerce, these sorts of glittering prizes, however contrived, take the place of international trade fair medals as marks of distinction.

But it appears that international trade fair medals have a long shelf life, if that can of oatmeal is any guide: the label still proudly displays the medals the product won at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. By comparison, Campbell Soup Company has all but eliminated its 1900 Paris International Exposition medal from its signature red-and-white labels (more trivia: inspired by Cornell football uniforms), but you can still find it where it's always been on the Tomato and Chicken Noodle varieties.

Maybe someone needs to organize a "World's Fair of Food" solely for the purpose of handing out medals to food processors that they can display on their labels for the next hundred years or so.

Given your post immediately above, perhaps the McCain's folks should give some thought to a new package -- and retire that World's Columbian Exposition copy.

Edited September 14, 2007 by MarketStEl (log)

[MelissaH]

Here's my chance to show you a couple of new features in my kitchen.

The first is the knife holders we use. We were on a vacation over the summer and had the opportunity to visit the IKEA in Burlington, ON. (Hi, Kerry!) We think these knife holders must be new, because we didn't remember seeing them when we put the kitchen together last summer. The drawer on the left is my husband's, and the drawer on the right is mine. These holders are much easier than the cardboard sheaths we used to use for everything.

And the clock was a gift from my sister. It's over the door leading out to the deck, so you can read it from the living room. It's the only clock readable from the living room.

My husband set the table this afternoon. Here's your chance to see the red chairs again! They're really quite red, although they don't look that way in the pictures. The placemats are bright yellow, to match the Lion of Flanders. We're still keeping our eyes open for other Lions of Flanders, or even things the appropriate yellow color.

My husband also cooked down some onions this afternoon. Here he is, sniffling and crying as he sliced.

The sliced onions went onto the stove, with some olive oil and salt and I don't know what else because I wasn't in the kitchen when he did them.

They cooked down to golden lusciousness, and even had time to cool to room temperature before dinner.

While the onions cooked down, I sliced and chopped some other pizza toppings. The pineapple just needed to be drained.

This knife is my $10 special. Yes, it's cheap. But the handle feels good in my hand, and the blade's holding an edge nicely, especially since we sent it in to be sharpened. I also chopped a little goat cheese, from the Lively Run Goat Dairy.

The last bit of prep work was getting the dough warmed up and out of the bags. I try to remember this a couple of hours before we light the grill. To start, I oiled a half-sheet pan, took each dough ball out of its bag, and flattened it into a disk. The oil coating keeps the dough from crusting over, prevents anything from sticking to the grill, and also helps to carry the heat in and make pretty grill marks.

When our dinner guests arrived, we all helped to carry things downstairs and outside to the grill. When I grill pizzas, I set the outside two burners on my grill to medium, and the middle burner on low. First, I flatten a dough ball and put it on the grill to cook the first side.

Once the underside (facing the burners) is cooked enough to hold its shape, I give it a little twist to get the pretty grill marks, to make sure it isn't sticking to the grate, and to help things cook evenly. When the first side is done enough, I use a spatula and my peel to take it off the grill. I flip it over so the cooked side is up, and then top the pizza away from the heat. Once the pizza is topped, it goes back on the grill.

On the second side, after a few minutes I give it a 180 degree turn, to again be sure nothing's sticking and to make sure both ends cook evenly. I leave it on as long as I dare, to get the crust done without burning and to get the cheese melted and as browned as I can.

Then the finished pizza gets rushed upstairs and onto either a rack so it doesn't get soggy, or into a warm oven until all the other pies are cooked. One pizza makes a nice dinner for one person.

We each had our own pizza for dinner. I topped mine with caramelized onions, goat cheese, and tomato slices. No sauce, but I was the only one not to use sauce. I think everything I prepared went onto at least one pizza.

Our guests brought us some corn, which we steamed and ate with butter and salt. And we had salad: romaine and tomatoes. Good food, good company.

MelissaH

[eskay]

So, uh...three guesses what I cooked for breakfast this morning. And its a good thing I had lots of time, because I wasn't yet aware of this magical make-it-the-night-before technique. Oh well, learning new things is fun!

[MelissaH]

Dessert followed dinner. I actually started prepping the other half of dessert just after I finished chopping pizza toppings. As always, I first gathered my ingredients and equipment:

I then put things into the blender container: 180 g peanut butter (the book says to use something emulsified, and I chose one with less sugar because I know the recipes in David Lebovitz's book have a tendency to be over-sweet), 160 g sugar (down 20 g from what the recipe says to use), 2 2/3 cups of half-and-half, a pinch of salt, and a smidge of vanilla extract. The actual prep is really easy: buzz it all together in the blender. Then get it good and cold before freezing in the ice cream maker.

After dinner, I got out the ice cream makers. Yes, I have two. They're identical Cuisinart models. We'd gotten the first one at Williams-Sonoma, for a pretty good price considering that it came with two freezer bowls. A year or so later, we were at our local warehouse club and saw the same maker with the extra bowl, and picked it up thinking that we'd have more bowls and a complete set of extra parts if anything happened. All four bowls live in the freezer, so they're always ready. This is the first time I've used both motors at once.

First, I grabbed a spoon and tasted the grape sorbet base. It was still pretty tangy, but I really didn't want to add any extra sugar. I put the first machine together, turned it on, and added the sorbet base.

Then I put the second maker together, whisked the peanut butter ice cream base together because it had somehow separated into a tan top layer and a white bottom layer, turned on the motor, and added the base.

Both machines churned away for a while, during which conversation was difficult due to the noise level. As I watched, the sorbet apparently got some air incorporated, as I kept on seeing a purple mountain rise up and up and up. (I'd had quite a lot of sorbet base, not so much ice cream base.) When the sorbet started to peek up and out of the top, I decided that everything had gone long enough and it was time to eat dessert. I was able to remove the tops and dashers from both ice cream makers without incident, and without dumping any cold goodness on the floor or countertop.

My husband doesn't like peanut butter in his ice cream, so he went with just sorbet. The rest of us did a mixture. And oh, what a combination! The grape sorbet was on the tangy-tart side, and the peanut butter ice cream was definitely a little too sweet by itself. But put the two of them together and you have what every school lunch dreams of! I definitely need to come up with an appropriate cookie for an ice cream sandwich base, because this combination is a winner.

After we finished dessert, I packed the remaining sorbet and ice cream into their own rubbermaid containers. I pressed a covering of plastic wrap directly onto the surface before putting the lids on the containers. And these leftovers went into the freezer. My plan is to load them into a cooler with some cold packs and bring them downtown to the local bookstore tomorrow when I run errands. The backstory: I ordered the ice cream book, and when I picked it up, one of the employees commented that I'd have to start bringing ice cream in now. (I'll often bring in something that I've baked.) The first time, I brought some pear sorbet. I'm guessing this will blow their socks off!

Time to head towards bed. The dishwasher is running, and although Casey did a drainerful of stuff by hand, there's still plenty more waiting for me in the morning. Tomorrow's a school day, but it will be interesting to hear whether people take tomorrow off to make a four-day weekend.

Good night!

MelissaH

[docsconz]

I have enjoyed the varied aspects of this blog as I finally have had a few minutes to catch up with it. Though I live in NY State, I live on the other side near a city that can be spotted on the weather map Melissa posted above. That being said I am embarrassed to say that I have never really spent any time int he region of the blog. Cornell is the one Ivy School I have never visited. I did interview and was accepted at U of Rochester School of Medicine, but had the unfortunate experience of arriving to an empty campus in bleak December and so ultimately matriculated elsewhere. The closest that I have been to that region for any length of time has been Cooperstown, a marvelous town in its own right and home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and a fantastic farm museum amongst other delights.

Nevertheless, it is apparent that these two regions of NY State share a lot in common, especially when it comes to food and agriculture with both areas seemingly experiencing a renaissance of agricultural quality.