With Apologies to Benny.

Gentle readers!  I have been sorely remiss in my blogging, but I have a reason(s), sort of!

See, I am taking the GRE next week, and between pretending to learn math and getting angry at practice tests, I have had neither the time nor energy nor inclination to engage in anything culinarily (a word I just made up) exciting.  Also, The Husband and I leave soon for our four-week New York/India Holiday Extravaganza, so we have enacted a moratorium on new food purchases and are forcing ourselves to work though the fridge and freezer stocks as much as possible before our departure.  As you can imagine, this complicates starting up all the exciting new blog things I had planned.

However, we still have to eat, and what better way to use up old vegetables than stir-fry?

I used to hate making stir-fries.  They never tasted right, things didn't cook properly – for something that seemed so easy to throw together, it was remarkably difficult.  That is, until we got our wok.  Our glorious, 14-inch, cast iron, solid-as-a-friggin'-rock wok.

gracias, ben y alé!

Seriously, it's pretty awesome.  It may weigh somewhere in the area of a metric tonne (imperial weight) and take forever and a day to heat up, but it works like a charm.

Now, I've always thought that pieces of specialized, single-function equipment – things like woks and bread makers and rice cookers and pastry cutters – were entirely unnecessary, and that a good cook could easily improvise and make good food without them.  I still believe that about most things, but the wok has converted me.  I am a wokist.  All hail the mighty wok and its ability to cook food.  Thou shalt not mock thy wok.  Wok wok wok.

like this, only with woks (also I am not a tiger)

Anyway, so:  stir-fries.  After some rummaging around in the fridge (which is still packed to the gills with dairy products), I found the following: shallots, garlic, ginger, hatch chiles, red peppers, zucchini, carrots, broccoli slaw, peas, bok choy, and tofu (full disclosure: I might have actually gone out and purchased the tofu and choy, but that was only because we needed some protein and who doesn't love bok choy and don't judge me).

Once everything was chopped, I heated up some grapeseed oil and, once it was hot, added a couple of teaspoons of Gunpowder green tea leaves and let them fry until they began to open up (for those of you unfamiliar with Gunpowder tea, the leaves are tightly rolled little balls that uncurl when you cook or steep them).  Then, add the onions, garlic, ginger, and chiles; once they have become fragrant, mix in the tofu and a bit of Chinese Five Spice powder and cook until golden brown.  Next come the snap peas, then the red pepper and zucchini.  The carrot and broccoli slaw follow (broccoli slaw is this awesome pre-made mix of shredded carrots and broccoli stems that they sell at both Fresh and Easy and Trader Joe's, which has become a fixture in my salads).  The bok choy goes in last, and once it has wilted and become tender, you're basically done.

"But Heather," you might be saying, "what about the flavor?  Your dish seems to be lacking in tasty essences."  And herein lies the trouble I usually had with stir-fries:  it turns out that I don't really like soy sauce.  In small quantities, sure, but I find it very easy to be overwhelmed by the flavor (and using it as a dipping sauce for gyoza or similar just plain terrifies and confuses me).  But I do really like teriyaki sauce, which is what I used here (I added a small amount after the red pepper and zucchini, then some more after the bok choy), so go figure; I also added a bit of Trader Joe's sweet chile sauce (which, incidentally, is what I use for dippings of gyoza or dumplings, etc.).  Oh, and at some point you should tell The Husband to cook up some black rice/somen noodles and then throw them in at the end, and also chop up some pickled peppers if you want some extra kapow.

Et, voila!

noodles!  they are EVERYWHERE.

You can also do basically the same thing again tonight, using homemade seitan in place of tofu and peanut satay sauce/seitan cooking liquid in place of teriyaki and brown rice instead of noodles, and maybe adding some dilly beans too if you're truly mad.

IN A PICKLE OF A JAM.

I am not sure why it is considered a bad thing to be in a jam.  I can understand why one would not want to be in a pickle, given the connotations of cannibalism and whatnot, but jam?  Jam is sweet and tasty and good on toast and scones.  Yes, it is sticky and a bit messy and viscous, but that's never killed anyone (oh wait, yes it has).  Though jelly is suspect, as it's just so...unnatural.  Fruit is not smooth and shiny, people.  It is seedy and pulpy and complicated; let's keep it that way.

Anyway, idioms and jellyrants aside, I have gotten it into my head that maybe I should be canning things.  After reading through a few different canning/preserving books, I came to the conclusion that the general attitude towards canning is:  OH MY GOD IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THESE RECIPES EXACTLY YOU WILL CONTRACT BOTULISM AND DIE A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH ALONE AND FULL OF BITTER RECRIMINATION OH AND YOU'RE UGLY TOO.  Nevermind that each book has different recipes for the exact same things – there can be only one.  That won't kill you.

So I said bupkus to all that and decided to forge my own path into this Brave New World of food in jars.  I also decided to forgo a stop at Long-Term Canning Corners and instead get off this I-guess-my-metaphor-is-a-train-now at Just Put It In A Jar Junction.  There are two reasons for this:  (1) I am lazy, and (B) it isn't like I need more things to put into my already overstuffed pantry.

To start off on my quest (wait – quest?  I need to work on keeping these metaphors straight...) to the land of food self-sufficiency, a friend and I staged a little canning party (even though nothing was officially canned).  We each brought two recipes to the table:  I planned on making dilly beans and pomegranate jam, and she would do apple butter and ginger beer.

(Ed. note: While writing this post, I was suddenly seized by the need for scones, which are now in the oven.   And now we return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.)

Dilly beans, for the uninitiated, are green beans that have been pickled like your standard dill cucumber pickle, plus lots of garlic.  They seemed like a nice beginner's pickle, mostly because green beans, unlike all but the babiest of cucumbers, fit easily into a regular pint jar, and neither of us were keen on buying several large jars for a single project.  Also, cucumber pickles, at least some of them, require fermentation to reach peak flavor, whereas dilly beans just need to sit overnight in the brine.

To start, top and tail some nice green beans, then pack them into jars (somewhat snugly), along with garlic, dill, and black peppercorns (it is easiest to put in the garlic and dill first, or at least in-between batches of beans).  Just pour over some boiling brine (about two parts vinegar to one part water, with sugar and salt added – BUT READ THE BOOK OR ELSE THE BEANS WILL GIVE YOU DROPSY OR SOMETHING).  The book also said that the beans needed to be processed via boiling to tenderize them, as they were cold-pack vegetables.  This is a lie, as boiling beans, even if they are in jars, for 15 minutes will clearly overcook them.

I. AM. A. HUMAN. BEAN.

The pomegranate jam was a trickier customer, and not only because they are tedious to de-seed.

Pictured: an hour's worth of seed removal.

Pomegranates are also low in pectin, which is the fiber in fruits that makes a jam set into a jiggly pseudosolid.  Because we weren't adding any additional pectin to the pomegranates, we would have to cook the pomegranates long enough for the sugars (both in the fruit and added to the mix) to do the work instead (if you've ever made fudge or candy, you'll understand; if you haven't, that's a shame because it's a lot of fun).  I got the recipe from here, but since I wasn't spending the money for five pounds of poms, I used pomegranate juice instead.

I can't comment directly on making ginger beer or apple butter, because I was caught up in my own food problems.  However, I did learn the following:

• Apples will dry out if you bake them in the oven
• Peeling and pureeing 2 lbs. of ginger is tedious and noisy
• Wringing the juice out of 2 lbs. of ginger will make your hands tingly
• Dry apples do not work well in a food processor
• Tasting ginger beer that only has half the recommended sugar will make your face hurt

In the end, this is what we had:

at least it's pretty.

I cracked open my jar of dilly beans today, and I'm really pleased.  It has a nice crunch, and a good bite from the all the dill.  The pom jam, sadly, did not set, even though the plate test told me it would.  However, it makes a tasty pom sauce, which will potentially be used in an ice cream at some point in the near future.  The ginger beer, once it was corrected for sugar and you add a little club soda and mint, was tasty, though super gingery – it's good, but only in small doses (though if you have clogged sinuses, it will clear them good and fast).  I still haven't had a reason to use the apple butter yet, so I cannot give a review; perhaps its creator reads this blog and will comment?  (Oh, and the large jar in the middle is spiced brandy.  It takes a couple of weeks to mull.)

Overall, I'd say I came out 1.75-for-two on my part of the grand experiment – I'm quite happy with the dilly beans, and the pom jam just needs to set to be a total success.

Oh, but I am not done yet!

Remember the shameful bronze of my Dairy Olympics competition-with-myself?  I am what you might call a sore loser, so armed with more cream, I tried it again, this time using the proper technique of letting it sit on low heat for hours upon hours upon hours.

Success (mostly)!

There is really no way to make this look very appetizing, I apologize.

This is what two cups of cream looks like after sitting on a low burner for seven hours.  The wrinkly yellow skin is called the clout, and need to be removed (that's what I'm doing in the photo, and you can sort of see the fork peeling off a bit).  The thick stuff immediately underneath the clout is the clotted cream; under that is regular cream (though not full-fat, because most of that differentiated out into the clotted variety).  I say that this version is a qualified success because, while the clotted cream definitely coagulated out, the pan I used was too wide, which made the cream shallow and complicated separating the clotted cream from the thinner cream.  It all tastes good, but I wasn't able to skim just the clotted cream off the top; some of the regular cream got in with the clotted when I was spooning it out, so the whole thing is much thinner than it should be (proper clotted cream should be spreadable like butter).  It's really quite tasty spooned onto a scone with some pom jamsauce (though it is very messy, since all the toppings have the propensity to dribble off the scone). 

This might explain why I felt the need to make more scones at 9:30pm.

While on my pickling kick, I also wrangled up some pickled onions and peppers, which I enjoyed on a grilled cheese sandwich today.  I used red onions and yellow hot peppers, and the kick that both give off (though the onion only when raw) is tempered by the pickling process.

peter piper picked a peck of picked peppers and onions and liberty cabbage.

The large purple jar is red cabbage I am trying to transform into sauerkraut (the sour cream cup is just filled with water and is being used to keep the cabbage submerged).  Traditional sauerkraut is just sliced cabbage and salt; the salt draws out the cabbage's moisture, then mixes in to make the brine.  Sauerkraut is actually a made by lactic acid fermentation, in which various lactobacteria, which are naturally present on cabbage leaves, ferment the sugars into lactic acid, which both provides the sour taste and preserves the cabbage.  Once it has stopped bubbling, it should be all set; it takes about two weeks for sauerkraut to fully ferment, so here's hoping my wait will not be in vain (it also gives me some time to finish up the sauerkraut in my fridge).

IMPORTANT-TYPE ANNOUNCEMENTS!
In my constant attempts to keep this blog fresh and new, as well as trying to come up with a gimmick that will finally net me that book deal, I am hoping to start a few new series that will maybe get me to post a bit more frequently and help me maintain some focus so that not every post is a me prattling on? 

The first will be titled, "Hooray for Capitalism," where I will take you, the reader, along to some of my favorite food-related stores (as food-based shopping is my second-favorite kind of shopping) in the PHX and its environs.  The second, "Around the World in 80 Dishes," will feature me attempting to make vegetarian foods from all around the globe; I'm also trying to get The Husband to contribute suggestions for good music from each place to listen to while cooking and/or eating.  Hell, while I'm at it, I may even go back and tag and label some of my previous posts, in an attempt to maybe make sense of this place.  Who knows?  The possibilities are ENDLESS, except that they really aren't, as while the potential for the human mind may be infinite (though I doubt that it is), human life and our current levels of understanding are very much definite and bounded, which keeps our possibilities within defined limits.

So let's just say that the possibilities are MANY to keep us all from an existential crisis.

(Also, if you have any comments or suggestions of things you'd like to see here, let me know and I'll maybe take them under advisement.)

Philip Glass Only Wishes He Was El Diablo

Remember that glass class I mentioned?  I have actually been making stuff all this time!  Problem is, there's a lot of lag time between starting and finishing a piece (especially if you're making plates or bowls and require the use of a mold).  Depending on your design (or, as is more often in my case, how well I plan ahead and/or how much glass I have), there could be multiple firings, each of which adds another week to the production schedule.

We've been learning a variety of techniques, but I've mostly just been sticking to the standard "cut straight lines and grind the rest" school of glasswork.  Since tomorrow is our last class, I'm pretty much done with any large projects; plates and bowls and the like require at least two classes – one for fusing and one for slumping.  Tomorrow I'm planning on just playing around with the glass, rather than focusing on any concrete projects, and we'll see what I come up with.  Probably an owl.  It's always owls.  I feel like I need to redeem my owl-making after that first one.

Perhaps one day I'll sit down and explain some of the different things you can do with glass, once I actually have examples of said things.  Until then, I'll just play Show and Tell so you can see what I've been up to.

A sushi plate for The Husband.  Sushi plates are nice because they're small enough that I usually have the requisite amount of glass (5"x7.5"), but large enough that it feels like a proper thing to make.

A 4.5" square plate (I think this is technically called a candy dish?) with stringers (glass noodles).

A 7" square plate – white base with translucent blue and green overlay, with clear stringers on top.  I sort of wish I had fired it upside down at first (to get the green and blue glass to merge together a bit better), but that would have added to the firing schedule, and I am impatient.

Winter BirdFeet.  12" x 6.5".  The feet are broken bits of stringer; the "snow" (it was far less brightly colored before firing) is frit, which is ground up pieces of glass.

Seabirds (sort of).  This is the first plate I made, so don't judge it as harshly as the others.  The same blue glass as in the 7" plate above, with clear backing.  The egg decorations are either frit (the left and right ones), or confetti (paper-thin shards of glass).  This is also a sushi plate, but it didn't slump as nicely as the other one; I'm pretty sure it's because this one took multiple firings (back before I knew about this whole two-layers-of-glass-for-plates rule), and the glass shrinks in the kiln.

I have a few more plates in the pipeline, and I'll hopefully come up with a few more exciting non-plate pieces tomorrow.  Perhaps another Show and Tell will be called for?

The Dairy Olympics

Way back when, when the world and this blog were young, I told a tale of leaving cream to sit out overnight and somehow not contracting food poisoning.  The story ended tragically:  not with E. coli (thank kittens), but with a wasted batch of cream.

This past weekend, I issued myself a Dairy Challenge and decided to try my hand once again at making some fancy dairy things, specifically lemon curd*, clotted cream, yogurt, and creme fraiche.  A little bold?  Perhaps.  And as the title of this post suggests, one of these did not work out.  But which one?§

Before I get into all that, though, let me tell you a story.  It's about a girl and a boy and a quest for local milk.

Back in the Time Before PHX, The Husband and I lived in New England, in a much beleaguered city affectionately known as The Woo.  Now, some people don't like The Woo, mostly because it isn't Boston.  I cannot argue this point; The Woo ≠ Boston.  But!  The Woo did have some nice things going for it, like a bar that serves the best pizza I've ever had, a farm that sold unpasteurized cider and duck eggs, and a professor who would let me play with bird bones just because I asked nicely.

It also had a family-run dairy¥ that sold things like milk and cream, which was really quite helpful as The Husband and I try our darnedest to source as many of our animal products from local farms where we can confirm for ourselves that the animals in question are raised humanely.  We gave up meat to remove ourselves from the industrial cattle/pork/poultry system, but battery hens and commercial dairy cows still lead sad lives (if you can call them that) and we try not to support big agribusiness where possible.  That was actually my biggest worry upon moving to PHX: from where would I get my eggs and milk?  I had considered going vegan, but man, I do love milk.  And eggs for baking.  It would have been tough.

Enter Superstition Farm.  It's a local dairy farm run by the nicest people on Earth who are big into keeping their cows (and chickens, and horses, and everything) as happy and healthy as possible.  The Husband and I are members of their dairy CSA, where every two weeks we get milk, butter, cheese, ice cream, and other goodies, all made at the dairy (or their sister ice cream store) with milk from the family cows.  They also sell eggs from their free-range chickens, which are so free range they sometimes come into the store.  Also also, they let me hold said chickens.

cheep cheep!

So, armed with a lot of cream and milk from the SuperFarm, I set off on my adventures in dairy-based products.

First up, lemon curd.  Making lemon curd is a lot like making custard, in that you need to keep the temperature low and make sure that the eggs do not scramble; I like using a modified double-boiler to keep the heat under control.  Otherwise, it's pretty simple: just butter, eggs, sugar, and lemon juice.

And a peanut butter jar.

The triumvirate of clotted cream, yogurt, and creme fraiche came next, as they all had to sit out overnight before they'd be ready.  Here, a shot of the magic in progress.

dairylicious.

From left to right we have clotted cream, yogurt, creme fraiche.  Creme fraiche is the easiest: take cream, mix in cultured buttermilk (like we learned before, only cultured buttermilk will work∞), cover, and leave it out overnight to thicken up and culture.

Yogurt requires a bit more attention, in that you have to reduce milk without letting it scorch and also acquire live active yogurt cultures.  I simmered some whole milk with a vanilla bean pod, then added a bit of cream after I removed the pan from the heat.  Once the milk cooled (it has to be below 145ºF, and optimally between 104º and 108ºF), I added a dollop of SuperYogurt (full of lively flora) from the SuperFarm and stirred it up.  Yogurt also has to sit out in a warmish environment for the bacteria to kick in; using a bowl that retains heat is a good idea, as is wrapping the bowl in towels.

Clotted cream is essentially heavy cream (or a cream-whole milk blend) that has been slow cooked on low heat for hours until the cream separates and clots at the top.  The yellowish bit that formed on the bowl in the photo is the "clout" (as they say in Cornwall), the crust that sits on top of the thickened cream.

So, you've seen the picture; which one didn't work out?  Well...

The creme fraiche...seems to have turned out all right.  It might be a little thinner than the exorbitantly-priced stuff at the grocery store, but the flavor seems spot-on.  Given how it's not really eaten on its own, I think the slightly-off texture won't be much of a problem.  I consider myself redeemed!

The yogurt...also seems OK.  It is definitely not as thick as your store-bought variety, but I am blaming that on the lack of pectin and locust bean gum (so, really, it's Trader Joe's that can't make a proper yogurt without cheat ingredients).  The vanilla flavor is (very) subtle, and it's not nearly as tangy as your standard plain yogurt; I think it would go really well with some berries or other fruit.

Which leaves the clotted cream as the shameful bronze of these Dairy Games.  Since I didn't have the six or seven hours necessary to cook the cream, and am too impatient to wait for a time when I did, I tried a shortcut method that involved keeping the cream at a very specific temperature for an hour and then letting it cool.  However, given that electric stovetops are evil, and our specific stove hand-forged by the devil himself, I think I either over- or under-heated (or both) the cream and it went all hemophiliac on me and wouldn't clot.

Oh, well.  I guess I'll just have to console myself with creme fraiche scones topped with lemon curd and/or any of the homemade jams in the pantry.  Don't worry about me; I'll manage.  Somehow.
__________________________________________________________
*Lemon curd is sort of the outlier here, in that it's not really a dairy product.  It has butter, sure, but that's the only cow-based ingredient, and there's not much of it.  But let's not nitpick; let's leave that to our fellow primates for their communal grooming.
§DRAMATIC CLIFFHANGER!
¥ It also did things like sell milk in glass bottles, which is awesome.  Less awesome is when someone packs the bottles too closely together in the car, and then one shatters and gets milk all over the floor of your car and then your car smells like sour milk for months and people STILL ask you about it.
∞Creme fraiche is so elitist.

happy cats make it harder to blog

so, i had every intention of writing a fascinating post about the things i made in my glass fusion class that are finally done, or about fun things you can do with free citrus, or about my trip to our awesome butcher and adventures in cooking jowls.  however, pannekuchen just woke up from his nap in our recycling box and decided he wanted to be petted, and, well, i can't argue with him.  he has this uncanny ability to scootch up onto my chest and thus activate my allergy response by shoving his fur up my nose, and the only way to fix it is to move my computer off my lap so that the cat has more room.

and so, my computer is perched precariously on my knees while pannekuchen sleeps with his head on the trackpad.  this complicates blogging, as does the fact that my right hand is now underneath a comatose kitten.  all these informational updates will have to wait until pancakes decides it is time for a cat fit and wakes up.

normally i would push him over so that i could still use the computer normally, but given how we had a little accident with the nail clipper today and i still feel a little guilty, i feel like i owe him one.  enjoy it while it lasts, little cat; i have not forgotten the repeated attacks made upon my person this past week, and i sort of feel like a sap for being so nice over the fact that i slightly overclipped a nail when he has shown no remorse over leaping upon me and trying to bite me about the head and neck region multiple times.

also, we'll return to our regularly scheduled capitalization and whatnot next time; holding down the shift key and typing a letter are hard to do single-handedly.

Beans and Grains Anonymous

Hi, I'm Heather, and I have a dried goods problem.*

As I've hinted at before, I have this thing for beans.  And grains.  I don't know where it came from; like most things, I blame The Husband, as I had never encountered a dried bean before I met him and now look at me. 

But, whatever the reason, it's clear that this little issue isn't going away anytime soon.  So I decided to document my current bean-and-grain situation, in hopes that visualizing the extent of the madness might help me come to grips with my addiction.  As they say, the first step is to admit you have a problem.†

First, the beans:

Also shown: my classy Gladware collection.

There you have it: our 24 varieties of bean.¥  Aren't they pretty?  Doesn't it make you want to go out and buy some beans, to marvel in their colors and sizes and...

NO.  Must stay strong.

So, yeah - 24 types of beans. 

Ok, incredibly nerdy taxonomy‡ time: 

Our 24 beany varieties represent seven genera (Cicer, Lens, Vicia, Glycine, Vigna, Cajanus, and Phaseolus).  Half of the beans come from the Phaseolus genus, with nine varieties being of the P. vulgaris species (your common New World beans, like kidney and pinto and such).  The second largest genus represented is Vigna (beans of Asia), which includes most lentils and azuki beans.

/taxonomy

In addition to beans, we/I have also accumulated a lot of grains, somehow.∆

Celiacs and other glutenphobes - look away!

In columns from left to right, we have: corn (polenta, posole); grains-but-not-really (quinoa, couscous, amaranth); rice; and wheats/other cereal grains (last two columns).  For those of you keeping track, spelt is my favorite grain.

Well, now that I've seen my beans and grains laid out like this, I am simultaneously impressed and ashamed.∞  No matter what these photos may suggest, I am really trying to keep this whole bean situation under some semblance of control.  Though I'm pretty sure that, in addition to learning old-timey skills for food preparation, having a large store of dried goods would be a helpful bargaining chip in a post-apocalyptic world...£

Next time on "Trips Through the Pantry," perhaps I'll show you my collection of 33 loose-leaf teas.  Or my 20-something varieties of dried pasta.  Or my 60ish different kinds of spices.  Or the oil and vinegar shelf.

Maybe I really do have a problem. 

A tasty little problem.
__________________________________________________________
*Hi, Heather.
†The second step is probably to not buy two more pounds of beans while at the Ferry Market in San Francisco last weekend.  But it's not really my fault - I was there with a friend who is definitely a Bean Enabler.  You can't just expect me to not buy anything when she's standing there buying $30 worth of beans, now can you?  No, you can't.
¥Eagle-eyed readers with a rudimentary knowledge of numbers might notice that there are 25 containers in this photo.  However, two of the faux-Tupperwares contain the same type of bean; once is a spiced bean, and the other is plain.  Thus, there are actually only 24 distinct varieties of bean.  So don't write me angry letters.
‡This (taxonomic classification) is what I do every week at the museum.  It's either a short bit about bean genera or a long rumination about the complexities of mollusk taxonomy.  I figured getting dorky about beans would go over better, but if anyone's interested in gastropod identification and classification, I can talk about that.  Oh lord, can I tell you about that.
∆ I think it has something to do with gnomes.  Grains - ??? - PROFIT?
∞Impshamed?  Ashpressed?  Lupus?
£ Seriously, if society as we know it were to collapse tomorrow (or Tuesday, depending on your level of optimism re: mid-term elections), I could survive pretty well on all the stuff in the pantry (assuming I had access to potable water, a pan, and someone to make fire, since I don't know how to use a lighter.  Or a match.  Maybe I should start learning how to summon flame with flint and tinder, or else knowing how to make butter isn't going to be much use when the lights go out and the darkness creeps in, eyes glowing and fangs bared, the wind howling a night dirge to a moonless sky.).

It's Janet - Miss Jackson if you're pasty. (UPDATE)

Ok, first things first:  this post is about pasties, the food (where "pasty" rhymes with "nasty").  Not the other pasty, which rhymes with "hasty" and is only occasionally edible.*  Make sure you remember this, or else this post will get confusing and probably rather weird by the end.^

So, pasties.¥

The pasty is, essentially, a self-contained pot pie.  Originating in Cornwall (or Devonshire, depending on who you believe), it was a common food for Cornish tin miners who were unable to come back aboveground for lunch.  The thick, dense crust, which was folded over the filling and crimped closed, made the pasty easy to eat with one hand, which is quite useful when you're hundreds of feet underground and covered with dirt and soot and arsenic.§  The dirty bit at the end, where the miner had been holding the pasty, was then discarded; this not only prevented the miner from consuming arsenic and dying of poisoning,ˇ but the leftover bit of crust was believed to appease the mine demons.‡

I am not a Cornish miner.◊  But, I do certainly like mouse books, which is of course where I first learned about pasties.±  They also come up in another series of books I enjoy, this time about a cat who solves mysteries, sort of.∞  Anyway, these cat books take place in northern Minnesota (or Michigan or something), where pasties˚ are common.  So it comes up a lot, and this is where I learned the pronunciation and the traditional filling (steak, potatoes, onions, rutabaga).

I decided to finally attempt to make pasties€ after a visit to the Cornish Pasty Co. in Tempe.  I think I got the Vegetarian Cottage Pie, but don't actually remember.  Whatever it was, it was pretty tasty, but I definitely came away thinking I could make it myself.  Also, after the day of chili and cornbread (and pie), I had decided that, PHX weather be damned, I was going to start using my oven and eating like it was autumn, even if it killed me.

Finding a good pasty recipe is a complicated undertaking, mostly because of the small handful of variations and the vehemence with which those variations are defended by their respective camps.  This is a good place to start (and possibly be overwhelmed) with your own pasty making.†  (The sweet pasties at the bottom of the page also sound tasty - like a portable fruit pie, but vastly superior to this.)  I actually got my crust recipe from here, because it seemed a bit lighter; I was pleased with the result, but am thinking that a proper shortcrust would be good too.  As for filling, I was distinctly untraditional: I blanched and mashed some potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower, then added that to a pan of onions, garlic, bay leaves, rosemary, cremini mushrooms, and peas (a slice of smoked Gouda cheese went on top of one of the pasty fillings, too).  We ate them with a bit of homemade ketchup and were full of autumn (sort of) cheer.

Also, sorry - no pasty (of either variety) photos today (I forgot to take one).  Instead, I offer a picture of Pannekuchen tangled up in a ball of yarn.

Not a magic cat.

UPDATE: If, like The Husband, you know nothing about music from albums that have sold more than 2,000 copies and are thus sellouts, this title is a reference to the 1986 Janet Jackson song, "Nasty."
*But significantly more related to the person in this post's title.
^Though the other pasty (the...article of clothing?) would be relevant to the crafty nature of this blog.  I could turn it into a side business:  Hasty Pasty, for the stripper on the go!
¥The food.  Stay with me here, people - we've got a lot to get through.
§No old lace, though.  Too frilly and murdery.
ˇSooner than he would just by being covered in arsenic all day, I suppose.
‡No, really.
◊Or minor.  Or myna.
±Again, I am talking about the food.  The quests that the mice go on are not for sparkly tassels so that they can go about topless; besides, they are mice and they don't have the same social mores as humans so don't worry about it anyway.
∞And before The Husband gets on here and starts making fun, let me just say that the cats themselves to do not actually solve any mysteries; their owner, a wealthy former newspaper reporter, does.  The cats cannot talk; they are normal cats.  Though one of the cats is sort of magic, but not really - even if he has extra whiskers and that might make him more perceptive and/or magical, he just does the things that cats do and his owner connects the dots and then the bad guys somehow get caught.  If you've ever owned a cat, you would know what I'm talking about if I had any idea how to actually describe what I mean.
˚I am mostly referring to the food, but since I have never been to northern Minnesota or the UP, I cannot comment on the popularity of the hasty pasty.
€I give up.  Pretend this is whichever one you want.
†Also, be sure to check out the Star-Gazing Pasty recipe at the bottom of the page.  Trust me.  Ignore the bit about herrings if you need to.

apparently all caps is not acceptable title behavior.

Faithful readers!*  I have been remiss in my blogging, but I have a reason!

So, remember when I went to New York and it was autumn and lovely, and I mentioned how Arizona decided to tone it down a bit when I returned so that I could go outside and not get too stabby?

Yeah, that's over now.

Since I've gotten back to PHX, the temperature has decided to hover perilously close to 100º, which is exactly the same thing that happened this time last year, when I first arrived in Arizona.^  I had all these grand designs for fall cooking and baking, but the heat broke my resolve.  Fortunately, The Husband stepped up his game, and we decided that maybe, just maybe, if we pretended like it was fall and we made fall foods, perhaps we could trick the weather into changing.  

And one of the great fall foods, of course, is chili with cornbread (with smuggled apple pie, oh yes!).  I had asked The Husband to write about it, because he made it, but he responded, "Blearghª, it's just chili."  So, herewith I am going to try to re-create the chili-making.

First, choose 10 or so varieties of bean from our almost nonsensical collection.‡  Next, because you are clearly anticipating a long, hard winter that will require sustenance, through several handfuls of each bean type into the pressure cooker.  Put pressure cooker on the stove, then check email and Google reader.  Once beans cook, start chopping tomatoes (or use canned tomatoes, whatever), and dig out the frozen corn and peppers.  Chop some (a lot of) garlic too, and some onions, and throw everything into a pot and let it simmer.  Go read a few blog posts and comment on Facebook.  Put in spices.  Taste, then add more.  Yell at NPR story.  Add some more pepper, because everyone has tastebuds of steel, right?∆  Spend 20 minutes sifting through prodigious music collection to find perfect album for chili.  Serve.  Go get more milk, since your wife drank both your and her glasses before finishing even half her dinner.

So, yeah, it was spicy.  But!  It was tasty, especially when you add some sour cream and avocado and cheese, all of which cuts the mouth-burnination quotient greatly.  There was also green sweet cornbread (made with honey and blue cornmeal) and fig-cranberry-apple-ginger pie.  I don't know much about the construction of these two delights, other than that the pie contained Jonagold and Pippin apples (Pippins are kind of my new favorite apple, by the way); if you want the details, you'll have to ask The Husband.  Or just raise a ruckus, and perhaps he'll cave to peer pressure and finally write the damn post himself.

Next up, pasties!  (Not those kinds, pervert - this is a family blog.)

*All five of you!
^Happy One-Year-and-One-Day anniversary, PHX!  Except that it's not happy, because you're a punk and like trotting out heat waves like show ponies.
ªAt least, I think that's what he said.  It is very hard to transliterate guttural mumblings.
‡Please note that this makes up less than half of our total bean hoard.  Like I've said before, we (I) have problems.
∆Wrong.

A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

Summer in Arizona, to be blunt, is terrible.  It is truly horrifying to wake up at 8am and have it already be 95ºF, and for it still to be in the triple-digits at 11pm.  Two weeks without air conditioning in the car didn't help matters; it actually got so hot in the car once that my eyes STARTED BURNING.*

The other problem with Arizona summers is that they drag on.

I thought I smelled brimstone.

Seriously, they seem to never end; you'll be taunted with a day or two of pleasant (read: mid-90s) weather, and then your dreams will be crushed with an extended heat wave.  So, in an effort to retain some of my quickly dissipating sanity,∞ I went home to WNY for some family time and a much-needed respite from the heat.

And New York did not disappoint.  My first day home, I woke up, made a cup of tea, and sat out on our back deck and crocheted for a couple of hours.  This was what I was working on:

Let us hope certain family members do not read this blog, or else the jig is up!

And this was what I saw whenever I looked up from my yarn:

Is it still leaf-peeping if it's my backyard?

The next day was cold and rainy, which was pretty much exactly what I was hoping for.  You know what's good on a cold, rainy day, apart from yet more tea and several hours spent reading whilst cuddling with cats?

This.

After much cajoling, I managed to get a ride down to the Cider Mill, where I acquired a cinnamon sugar doughnut, a buttermilk doughnut, and a quart of cider†.  The cider was gone within a couple of days.  The doughnuts barely lasted 30 minutes.

That night, as part of my on-going effort to teach my family the value of vegetables, I improvised a little vegetable barley soup, full of good things like kidney beans and turnips and cabbage and broccoli and onions and carrots and celery (and barley).  I also got to bust out the crock pot, the likes of which I haven't used for years; the soup turned out good, after an extended cooking to get the beans to soften (crunchy, undercooked food seems to be a trend, here).  With a good hunk of crusty bread, it's a pretty solid way to end a chilly day.  Also, the weather started cooperating.

It's nice to be back in a place where one can stand in the middle of a main road and not get run over.

This was also the night where I taught one of our cats to play tetherball.

Not very athletic, this one.

It was a good game, until the RattyCat fell over and refused to get back up.

Friday involved more tea, more cider, a trip to the farm stand, the worst allergy attack I've had in months, the consumption of A LOT of Benedryl, an 8pm bedtime, and 12 hours of sleep.

Fortunately, this left me well-rested for Saturday, when my mother, my grandmother, and I drove up to the Finger Lakes to go to the Windmill (a large outdoor flea/farmers'/craft market) so I could get some good apples, visit wine country, and go to the best ice cream place in New York.

We used to go to the Windmill a lot when my family would go camping on Keuka Lake, the smallest (and most y-shaped) of the Finger Lakes.  My brother accumulated quite the Pog collection from there¥, and I always buy lots of vegetables and baked goods from the Mennonites.  This time, not only did I get some excellent apples, I also got this sweet apron:

Me?  Owls?  What a surprise.

Apron Owl is watching you master cakes.

and adopted this hand-carved decoy, named Rutiger, who joins Declan as our guard ducks.

Quack.

Onward we went to Seneca Lake, where we visited my favorite winery and I loaded up on my favorite wine.^  It's also quite pretty there, up on the hill overlooking the lake.

Mmm, future wine.

We also stopped at a couple of other wineries, but enough booze:  what about the ice cream?  Well, after over 150 miles of driving (and several missed turns), we arrived.

Oh, my mother will be displeased with this photo.

This is it.  Cayuga Lake Creamery in Interlaken, NY.  (Incidentally, we saw our third Finger Lake of the day:  can you guess which one it was?)ª

The ice cream selection:

The ice cream:

Don't be thrown off by the forced perspective: the ice cream cone was not as tall as the building.

This was mine: after much indecision, I decided on a scoop of sea salt caramel on top of a scoop of gianduia in a homemade waffle cone.

The verdict?  Delish.  And pretty reasonably priced, too; they were substantial scoops, and I actually feared I wouldn't be able to finish mine.£  Was it worth it?  Opinions most likely differ amongst the travelers that day, but I'm certainly glad I went.‡

Sunday morning found me waking up well before dawn to catch my flight home.  Arizona decided to greet me with sub-100º temperatures, which I appreciated.  The Husband and I have already planned an apple pie-baking day to celebrate my glorious return (and my bounty of apples), and Pannekuchen seems to have made a new friend.

Not shown: five seconds later when Pannekuchen tried to bite Rutiger's beak.

*Also, having to wear mittens when it is 115ºF so you don't burn your hands on the steering wheel while driving?  What?  No.
∞I'm going to say it looks like this: 

†This is normally where I would go off on a ranting tangent about how unpasteurized cider is so much better than pasteurized, and how things have never been the same since the fascists took unpasteurized cider off the market just because a few kids and/or old people got sick or died or something, but it's not like there wasn't a warning on the label and I drank the stuff for years and never got sick and the problem is today's kids being all mollycoddled, and besides a little exposure to bugs or bacteria is good for you and GET OFF MY LAWN, WHIPPERSNAPPERS.  But I won't.
¥Seriously.  One summer, that's all he bought.  I'm still not sure that he ever knew that Pogs were used in some sort of game; if he did, he certainly didn't know how to play it.  We keep a lookout for them, as the stall is still there (though it now sells marbles and rulers and cassette tapes).
^The 2008 Lemberger, if you're curious.
ªIt was Cayuga Lake.  If you didn't figure that out, you might want to go back and re-read the previous sentence.
£I lead a rough life.
‡Not least because this means that I am now winning in the (unspoken?) competition between The Husband and I over visiting all of these ice cream places.  IN YOUR FACE, HARD J!

GLASSY EYED AND BUSHY TAILED

Two posts in as many days?  Batten down any hatches and break out the canned goods – we are clearly approaching the End Times, here.*

Actually, not really.∞  I'm just heading to New York tomorrow to experience a bit of proper autumn (planned activities include: picking apples and cooking stews and wearing sweaters and playing in the rain and tasting wine and eating at the best ice cream place in New York [according to USA Today, at least] and generally enjoying life outside of the parched oven that is Phx), and since the internet connection there is measured in double-digit kilobits/second, I probably won't be able to post much unless I leave it running overnight.˚

So, before I go, I thought I would actually talk about something that relates to the "craft" part of this humble blog's subheading.

As long-time readers know, I'm taking a glass fusion class at the Phoenix Center for Visual Arts.  Eventually we'll be doing things like working with glass powders and metals and etching, but right now all I know how to do is (a) cut glass, and (b) grind glass.  But that's enough to make a few things, which I thought I'd share (and to serve as a useful point of comparison for what will hopefully be vast improvement).

OK, first up:  a little glass physics.  The ideal thickness for glass is two layers; if you stack more than two pieces together, it will flatten down (and out) to two layers thick.  To illustrate this, we cut 1" x 1" squares, then stacked and fired them.

1, 2, 5!  Five pieces of glass!

From left to right, we have a stack of five glass pieces, counting down to a single square on the right.  A single piece of glass is the same size as two stacked pieces (going back to the whole "glass loves two layers" thing)^, and it expands from there.

Next are two examples comparing tac fusing with full fusing.  Tac fusing heats the glass just enough for pieces to stick together; full fusing melds the pieces together.

A contented sigh, in glass form

The A is tac fused, and the H is full fused.  Tac fusing creates texture and maintains the original shape better, while full fusion is sleek and shiny.¥

Of course, I tried to make an owl.

This owl has cleavage.

This is what happens when you don't properly balance/attach the cover glass and it slides off in the kiln.  I still love him, though.  He's...special.

See, my owl is scientifically accurate.

But!  I can rebuild him!  We have the technology!¶  Next week, I'll saw off the overhanging bit at the bottom, even out the edges with the grinder, and add some glass to fix the lumpiness.  I have another owl going into the kiln tonight; hopefully this one will be a bit more owly and a bit less, um, horrifically misshapen.

And that is Glass Fusion 101.  Next week I'm going to learn how to cut curved lines, which is terribly exciting.  However, we are getting closer and closer to the time when I have to go buy my own glass, which doesn't really excite me.  Ah, the life of an artist, I suppose.

If I'm not too busy jumping into leaf piles and having bonfires, I'll try to write up some of my adventures in Actual Seasons Land and send them to The Husband to post, if only to taunt those of you reading this in the desert.  And then, when it's 60ºF and sunny in January and I'm walking back from the farmers' market with just-picked oranges, I'll taunt the rest of you.

*Make sure you pay close attention to this post, because I might cover a lot of information and I don't want any of you left behind.
∞Hopefully.  Phx is all dry washes, so I can't be certain that rivers aren't running red with blood.
˚I recently learned that my hometown is technically part of Appalachia.  Our shoddy internet access makes more sense now.
^Science!  Again!
¥Tic-tac fusion leaves behind fresh breath with only one-and-a-half calories.
¶The Six-Billion-Dollar Owl (Adjusted for Inflation)!  This Fall, on Fox!

PRACTICE SAFE EATING: ALWAYS USE A CONDIMENT.* (ALSO, FOOD PORN, BUT NOT THAT KIND OF FOOD PORN, SICKO)

Right now, I have a potato rösti in the oven, which will hopefully be a tasty brunch on a crisp disconcertingly hot autumn Sunday.

But I am not here to discuss potatoes.  I am here to talk about condiments, specifically ketchup and mustard, specifically specifically how to make them.

Now, the funny thing about this is that I've never actually liked ketchup or mustard† (or any condiment, really, save for maybe aioli, and I'm not sure that's even really a condiment in the same sense as ketchup or mustard, though it is mayonnaise, which is a condiment, which I also dislike, so I JUST DON'T KNOW).  BUT, I do like a challenge, and the concept of making ketchup and mustard seemed so quaint and useless that I obviously had to try it.

MUSTARD
I've recently come to accept mustard as an ingredient in things (what with mustard seeds/oil comprising its own food group in the Bengali food pyramid), though I'm still suspicious of mustard on sandwiches and hotdogs, but given how I don't really eat sandwiches or hotdogs, I don't worry too much about it.  We used to have tiny jars of Grey Poupon in the fridge for use as an emulsifier in salad dressings, but one day we ran out and decided, "Well, we have pounds of mustard seeds – why not just make mustard?".§

Now, if you have ever had that talk with your parents about Where Mustard Comes From, you'll know that making standard yellow mustard (akin to the kind that my parents seem to keep in the fridge for years) is very simple: take mustard powder, mix water, maybe add some vinegar if you're feeling sassy.  Voila!—Mustard.  However, I decided to make wholegrain mustard, because I am hardcore and like spending three days to make food I may never actually eat.

This is what the mustard looks like.

Yay for hoarding jars!

As for taste, I actually have no idea.  We haven't needed any since we made it (during the Time Without Mustard, we moved away from emulsifying salad dressings, and haven't yet gone back).  But it looks like mustard and smells like mustard, which means we are at least two for three here.  (Still, I'm a little scared of it.  I've taken a sniff, and it sort of burns my nose; I'm a tiny bit concerned about what it will do to my esophagus.)

KETCHUP
Though I had my ketchup consumption limited when I was young, my mother did not do the same with my younger brother, who took to ketchup with a will that I have not seen equaled.  He put it on everything; he probably would have put in on salad, had we ever eaten any, or pancakes, if that wasn't disgusting even for him.  I'm sure that part of my aversion to ketchup stems from his overenthusiasm.  I have terrifying memories of washing off plates simply covered in ketchup, like some horrible crime scene where the french fries or mac and cheese suffered a gruesome fate at the hands of a deranged psychopath.

So you can see why I was so excited to make some.

I've occasionally tried ketchup since then, often by accident and usually when I'm sharing a plate of fries and my half gets infiltrated by the Red Menace.  I still can't see the appeal of ketchup – it's overly sweet and, for something made of so many tomatoes (and classified as a vegetable for the purposes of school lunch pyramids), it tastes nothing like tomatoes.   And I like tomatoes.

While back in New York this summer, I started watching re-runs of Jamie at Home, a cooking show about the exploits of Jamie Oliver and a loveable hobo^ as they garden their way into good food.  (Or something.)  It is probably the food-porniest food porn I've ever seen, all about soft-focus shots of Jamie cooking at his wood-fired grill, or close-ups of fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden, or (clearly re-dubbed) sounds of food sizzling in hot oil, or slowly-panning money shots of glorious-looking food on adorable rustic plates.  None of the food is too fancy; the focus is more on using great ingredients simply so that the natural flavors shine through.  Turns out that Joliver (as we call him) had a ketchup recipe, one with lots of tomatoes and not much sugar and some interesting ingredients.  I used the recipe from the cookbook companion to the show, and while the tomatoes were simmering, The Husband and I sat down to watch the episode in question ("Pickles and Preserves").

Of course, the recipe in the book is not the same as the one on TV.  Well, the ingredients are the same, but the methods differ; the recipe I give below is a combination of the two, using what I think makes most sense.  Either way, the ketchup was a success; we made some grilled potato chips for our first tasting, and I really enjoyed how the tomato taste shone through, and was complimented by the acidity and sweetness of the vinegar and sugar.

Strange-looking honey.

HA!  Take that, Heinz.  Ketchup does not need high fructose corn syrup, thankyouverymuch.  It also doesn't need to be a non-Newtonian fluid.¥

RECIPES

MUSTARD (from here, which you should totally buy because it is awesome and will teach you how to forage for limpets)

Ok, to make wholegrain mustard, take 6 T. brown mustard seeds, mix in 2/3 c. white wine vinegar, and let it sit out for 3 or 4 days (the longer it sits, the hotter it gets).  After it's done soaking, use a mortar and pestle to coarsely grind the mustard seeds and vinegar (just enough to crack the seeds – you aren't making a paste).  Grind 1/4 c. yellow mustard seeds in a spice grinder (or use mustard powder if you're lazy, not that I'd judge you or anything...) and mix this into the mustard/vinegar blend, adding another 1/4 c. white wine vinegar, 2 T. honey, and 2 tsp. salt.  Pour into a small jar, and store in a cool, dry place.

KETCHUP (adapted from here, to compensate for Jamie Oliver's inability to remember his own recipe)

1 large red onion, chopped (everything can be roughly chopped, since it'll all go into a food processor later)
1/2 fennel bulb, chopped
1 stick celery, trimmed and chopped
thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
1/2 red chile, de-seeded and chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
bunch basil, chopped
1 T. coriander seeds
2 cloves
1 tsp. black pepper
2 lbs. roma tomatoes, chopped
3/4 c. + 2 T. red wine vinegar
1/3 c. brown sugar

In mortar and pestle, grind up the coriander, cloves, and black pepper.  Add this, along with all the onion, fennel, celery, ginger, chile, and garlic, to a large saucepan and saute 10-15 minutes, until soft.  Add the tomatoes and 1 1/2 c. water; bring to a boil, then simmer until tomatoes break down and the liquid has been reduced by half.  Add basil leaves, mix, then remove from heat, pour into food processor/blender, and whiz until well-blended and pureed.  Put the sauce through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean saucepan, then add the sugar and vinegar (NOTE: I didn't think this was enough vinegar, so I added some cider vinegar as well, to taste), bring back to boil, and simmer until it reaches the consistency of ketchup.  Add salt and pepper to taste, then spoon into sterilized jars.  Close tightly and keep in a cool, dark place – it should keep for up to six months.


*Bet you never heard THAT witticism, or any variation of same, before.
†This is a lie.  I used to eat ketchup constantly when I was a wee little one.  But one day, my great-aunt told my mother that, if I was allowed to wantonly eat ketchup on everything, I wouldn't eat food that didn't have ketchup in it.  So I was cut off from ketchup, and by the time I was allowed to eat it again, I wanted no part of it.  This general sass continues to this day.
§Because this is how normal people think.  Right?  Please say yes.
^This is another lie.  He's not really a hobo.  I think.
¥Science!

THE STONE OF SCONE OF DESTINY (MOUSE EDITION).

So, as promised: scones.*

Scones are dead simple and tasty quick breads that, like most things I love, come from Scotland (see also: Robert Burns, bagpipes, Loch Ness monsters, men in kilts, scotch, etc.). Scones are also a key component of cream (or Devonshire) teas, where they are served with jam or clotted cream and oh my goodness PEOPLE IT’S REALLY TASTY.

They are such a quick bread, in fact, that an old Scottish saying suggests you can start a batch when you see unexpected guests at your gate and they will be done by the time said guests make it to your door. I will be honest: I’ve never produced scones that quickly (unless we’re talking about a very long sidewalk or very arthritic guests), but you can certainly get one of the simpler recipes from start to mouth in about 20 minutes. This is especially nice when it’s 10:30pm and you really want a cookie, but you aren’t patient enough to wait for your Husband to go make you some, so you just whip up a bannock of scones and all is right with the world.

All right, so this is a scone (a figgy chocolate balsamic scone, to be precise).

yummers. (photo courtesy of The Husband)

And this is the Stone of Scone.

yummers?

The Stone of Scone, also known as the Stone of Destiny, is a slab of red sandstone upon which the ancient kings of Scotland were crowned. Or at least they were until 1296, when Edward I (henceforth known as Edward the pommy bastard) invaded Scotland, took the Scone…err, Stone, and scarpered back to England where he immediately had the Stone installed as the seat in a fancy new coronation chair just so he could wave his arse (a bit more literally) in the general direction of the Scottish people. Since then, all English (and, after the Act of Union in 1707, all British) monarchs have been enthroned on the Stone. As part of a goodwill gesture, Elizabeth II had the Stone returned to Scotland in 1996; it now resides in Edinburgh Castle, though it must be returned to London for all future coronations.

Now, you may be wondering just what was the point of this little history lesson? Well, the Stone of Scone and proper scones are similar in some respects (in that they both come from Scotland and have been co-opted by the English and have the word “scone” in there somewhere), and I wanted to prevent any confusion right from the start. Besides, if you ever try to crown a monarch on a regular scone, you’ll just end up with a case of the royal crumb bum, and no one wants that (also, trying to eat the Stone of Scone will probably result in broken teeth and/or a night in a Scottish gaol).

All right, but what do mice have to do with scones?

OK, have you ever read any of the Redwall series, by Brian Jacques? If you haven’t, you should. Wait – actually, you should first pretend to be 11-year-old me (or, let’s be honest, 27-year-old me) and THEN read them, because I make no pretensions about any of these books qualifying as great literature, but they are well-written and a rollicking good time and there is NOTHING wrong with a grown woman strolling into the children’s section of the library and borrowing five or six of the books (so don’t judge me).

If I were to take off my Lackadaisical Blog hat and put on my Serious Literature hat, I could argue that these books offer a fascinating insight into a world of moral absolutes and rigid social structure, which can also be read as a trenchant commentary on the traditional British class system, but really: they’re books about mice that fight against rats. After the first few, the plot ceases to be exciting (SPOILER ALERT: good always wins), but the plots aren’t the point – it’s the way the stories are told that makes these books. Jacques is a master craftsman when it comes to building up a setting and characters, and even if it’s the same story over and over, it never ceases to be fun.

Of course, anyone who’s read the books knows that the feasts are legendary. Pages will be dedicated to describing all the varieties of food (who knew that woodland creatures were such good cooks?), and that is where I first discovered the mysterious wonder called scones. I actually purchased The Redwall Cookbook (STOP JUDGING ME) solely for the scone recipe, but was pleasantly surprised by the other recipes as well, for things like trifles and crisps and fools and tea breads and cakes and puddings and cobblers and shortbread and assortlekajoeia;fjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj…

Sorry. I drooled into my keyboard a bit there.

Anyway, just read the books because they are awesome. And if you happen to be nibbling on a fresh-baked scone and drinking some hot tea while you’re reading – well, I can think of few better ways of spending your time.

RECIPES
I have two recipes I tend to use: one for sweet cream scones (to be eaten plain), and the Redwall recipe, which is best with some jam or cream. The cream scone recipe can be found here; I usually mix it up by adding chocolate chips, any number of dried fruits, lemon zest, etc. The Redwall version is as follows:

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
heaped 1/4 tsps. of ground cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. unsalted butter, chilled and cubed
2 tbsp. sugar
2/3 c. milk

Basically, you follow the same procedure as the cream scones (mixing dry ingredients, rubbing in butter, etc.), only preheat the oven to 450ºF and bake until brown (12-14 minutes).†

*To sound like a true Scot, this should be pronounced “skons.”
†You can also make scones on a griddle, called a “girdle” in Scots. It’s really quite appropriate: given how much butter/cream/DELICIOUS FAT is in scones, you’ll need a girdle after a while.