Fall CSA: The Missing Weeks

My plan was a simple plan. I would write about what I got every week in my fall CSA. It was supposed to get me back in to the saddle of writing after taking a bit longer of a break than anticipated for the holidays.  That was the plan.  I made it two weeks in, and then time skipped forward and I couldn't catch up before the next box of fresh veggies and fruits would arrive.

This is me playing catch up and trying to figure out what to do with sweet potatoes. The last time I wrote I was lamenting over what to do with collard greens and turnips.  My friend, Dr. Jolly is a turnip genius, and I can day that I am no longer afraid of them. Oven roasted with spices and sugar made them an acceptable substitute for potatoes and quite tasty, that even my husband will eat them and not grumble too loudly.  I still want to leave them out for the Hogfather, but seeing that the Hogfather only comes once a year and I have plenty of turnips, there will be more turnips in my future menus until next Hogswatch.

Collard Greens are one of those things that I have to thank Dr. Jolly for also, since otherwise I might have left them out for the rabbits. Instead they ended up in homemade  Kung Pao Chicken.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it turned out well. I don't think that Collard Greens were meant to go in Chinese Food, but it didn't hurt anything and I can say that I ate my veggies. Even if they were cooked down and slathered in a spicy sauce.  It still counts as eating my veggies.

Week Three

Gala Apples
Kabocha Squash (Yippee another new squash that I have never heard of and have no idea what to do with!)
Broccoli
Sweet Potatoes (Still not done with the last ones, and now I have a small army of sweet potatoes, and yet can't help but thing about The Bloggess and Sam the Yam.)
Kale

Week Four

Apple Cider
Fresh Greens (Looks like baby Spinach to me)
Brussel Sprouts (I still think they look like alien pods like I did when I was 8.)
Apples
Acorn Squash

I never realized what a lazy cook I was until joining a CSA.  I thought I was a pretty active cook, and that my cook book challenge was keeping me from falling into a culinary lull.  That was all a lie until I joined the CSA, because now I am challenge to figure out what to do with the items in my white box every week. It is not as easy as throwing stuff on the grill and calling it a day. I guess I could do that, if I wanted to stand out in the dark and the cold wind while I try to figure out if the potatoes are done, which I don't.  I don't want to hang out in the cold where the wind has a habit of cutting through you like a hot knife to butter. I like my creature comforts, which means I have to put a little more effort in to my meals, and possibly eat an apple a day to combat the growing number of apples in my fridge.

Despite the challenge that this presents me, I can't help but feel like I won the lottery every week when I open my CSA box.  I never really know what I am going to get, and since my friend, Lizzy is doing it with me, it is a pleasure to know that she also has a sweet potato/apple infestation and I am not alone in this.   It is two days until my next box, and I have only used up about half of both boxes, and part of me wants to laugh hysterically if I end up with another potato and the other part of me wants to cry, because I know I will end up with another potato or possibly some other item bigger than my head that has never graced my kitchen before and I won't know what to do with.  I have begun to believe that laughing and crying are two sides of the same coin.

Fall CSA: Week Two

Week Two of my CSA is trying to make my brain explode. I had barely finished typing out my thoughts on Week One, when Lizzy popped over with my Week Two box.  She was kind enough to pick up my box when she picked up hers, but had not yet had a chance to look inside. Lifting off the white box lid, I was flabbergasted.   The first things that I saw were giant leaves that looked like they came out of the Jurassic period.  Lizzy helpfully informed me that they were collard greens, as we sifted through the rest of the box.

Week Two: One Spaghetti Squash, Two Heads of Cauliflower,  half dozen apples, a bunch turnips, collard greens

I can tell that  I am not from The South. I have no idea what to do with collard greens, much less how to fix them.  Part of me wants to take the foliage and build a roof to a Tiki hut with them, and hope for warmer weather. I am sure my cats would love to have a little handmade hut for the holidays, which makes me wonder if cats eat Collard Greens.  

Collard Greens is going to take some research to be able to prepare into something that I won’t need liquid courage to try. As if the Collard Greens were not enough of a challenge, I had a passel of turnips.  My only real knowledge of what to do with a turnip has to do with something not so real, which is to say that you leave them out for The Hogfather.  My husband is not enthused about turnips, and I have no practical experience with them. I also don’t think that The Hogfather is going to stop by our house.  This week’s box is going to require research and asking good friends for some advice on what to do with the items in my box. I do know one thing for sure, and it is that this week is going to be interesting. I can only wonder what week three is going to bring. 

“The philosopher Didactylos has summed up an alternative hypothesis as "Things just happen. What the hell".” 
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

Cook Book Challenge Slacker

I am slacking in my cookbook challenge. It isn’t that I am not using the cookbooks, but more that I am not writing about what I am doing.  This is going to be a somewhat long post of me playing catch up on the cookbooks that I have used in the effort that it will keep me on track.

I have a sweet tooth. I have discovered this. I did not think that I did, until I really looked at my cookbooks.  I was pleasantly surprised by my Cookies cookbook.  I found a recipe that took me a little bit out of my comfort zone, because it used fresh cranberries. I like cranberries. I like cranberries juiced and mixed with vodka.  This recipe involved chocolate, and in my mind the tart of the cranberry and the rich taste of chocolate would balance each other out into something passable. What I did not expect from the Cranberry and Chocolate Squares was that it would turn out so decadent. The recipe was easy, and because of this I made the bars three times and have probably given myself a cavity on the richness of it.  This recipe I will do again. I will also lie to myself and say that I get an acceptable amount of Vitamin C in my diet from eating a whole pan of chocolate cranberry bars.

Just to prove that I don’t just own cookbooks that have to deal with baking, I thought I would utilize a chicken cookbook that my friend, GAT gave me.  It is probably one of the more embarrassing cookbooks on my shelf, mostly because I don’t participate in the program.  It is a Weight Watchers Everyone Loves  Chicken cookbook.  There is nothing wrong with Weight Watchers, and it works for lots of people, I however have never partaken of the program. I just wanted chicken recipes.  Leafing through the pages I discovered little tidbits of information, such as Hunter Style Chicken and Chicken Cacciatore were the same thing. I flipped through the book several times, before I decided to make the Hunter Chicken.  I love mushrooms, my husband not so much. He says they taste like feet and have a way of permeating a meal, because of this mushrooms were omitted and while it was a good meal, it was missing something and that something was most likely mushrooms.  I am undecided if I will ever try this recipe again. It was a nice change from the sweets, but did nothing to dazzle the taste buds.

Lastly I utilized the Recipes from the Raleigh Tavern Bakery. This book was a gift from my mother in law from some of her many travels.  She had brought me a cook book, along with some rather delicious gingerbread cookies.  The cookies were the size of a small child's head. That could be a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one, since the cookies were huge. The cookbook had a quaint historic feel to them, and seemed simple enough.  Deciding on trying an oatmeal cookie did not turn out as well as one would hope. In fact it made me wonder if I had any sort of baking ability at all, since they did not tantalize the taste buds in the slightest. There was molasses in the cookie, which I think added to the weirdness factor. There was also a point in making the cookies, which it seemed like there was something missing, either an ingredient or an extra step somewhere, because it didn’t seem to come together. I think this is the first time in my adult life, that I have made cookies that no one was the slightest bit interested in eating.  I almost feel like my cook books are going to be taken away from me, because of this kitchen failure.  It is now getting closer to the holidays and I have to wonder if I should experiment on the influx of company or if I should stick to tried and true recipes that won’t kill people.  Jury is still out and I have too many of 63 cookbooks to get through before the end of June.

Fall CSA: Week One

November has come and gone, and I for one am thankful. I love November. It is the one month where I purposely drive myself a little nuts and spend hours obsessing over imaginary beings. Every November, for the past six years, I have participated in NaNoWriMo.  I laugh, I cry and I debate on killing off characters, just to move the story along, and when all else fails I write about food.  This year’s story had me working on my word count until the second to last day, which means I was remiss in my blogging duties, along with a lot of other duties.  The first week of December is my catch up week, and then the rest of life resumes and I realize how behind I am in everything else and start to panic. Deep breathing exercises are wonderful.

In my enlightened creative state of mind of the NaNo zone, I agreed to be part of a fall CSA that started in December.  Every week for the next several weeks I will be receiving fall and winter produce. In my brain this sounded like a really good idea.  I would get a bunch of root vegetables that I could use at my leisure.  At least that is the way that it played out in my head.  That is not the case.

Week One- Two Red Onions,  One bigger than my head Chinese Cabbage, one Acorn Squash, winter greens, a baker’s dozen of sweet potatoes and a half dozen red apples.

While there were potatoes in the mix, I had completely forgotten that squash is a winter supplemental, and Acorn Squash is a new territory for me.  I don’t consider myself a chicken when it comes to trying new food, but I sometimes need a little bit of prodding. I like squash for the most part, or at least that is what I told myself as I chopped it in half, scooped out the seeds and baked it until it was squishy, and then ate it. It was good.  I would not have guessed that it would be a cross between a sweet potato and a butternut squash; I was expecting a nuttier flavor, like Swiss cheese. I hate Swiss cheese, and a Swiss Cheese flavored squash sounds horrible to me. Thankfully Acorn Squash doesn’t taste like that.  I feel like I passed a week one challenge, by eating the Acorn Squash and am now ready for the Week Two box.  Or at least I think I am ready.

It Isn't Really a Pudding

In the conception stages of coming of with this self challenge, my friend Lizzy  knowing full well what it was going to entail, gave me a cookbook.  I would be really angry about the cookbook, if it wasn't something that I thought was really interesting and had thought of purchasing before.  Cooking for Geeks is probably one of the most intense cookbooks I have ever own. I do not mean intense as in the skill to be required to accomplish the recipes. I mean intense as in the amount of information that is skillfully shoved into every single nook and cranny of this book.

I feel like my IQ increased just by looking at recipes. Every recipe is skillfully explained on what to expect and why it does what it does.  I figured that since I had mastered chocolate pudding, that Chocolate Mousse (page264) would be more of the same.  I was a fool, but now I know better. Mousse is not a pudding. Anyone who tells you differently, needs to shut their mouth.  It is a plebeian concept to believe that mousse and pudding are the same.  Pudding is a dense collaboration of taste and flavor, while a mousse is a light and airy symphony of the senses.  Okay, that might a little bit of an exaggeration, but I think I made my point.


Despite my pre conceived notions as to how this would go down due to previous pudding experience, I was pleasantly surprised. The version of mouse I made was the egg white version, which came out extremely light and airy. The taste was rich, but not thick the way that pudding can achieve.  I felt like I was a much classier person by serving a delicate chocolate mousse after dinner, than when I serve pudding.

I am very much looking forward to making more recipes out of this book and feel like this is one of those perfect books to give some one that doesn't understand cooking. The logical approach that follows through this cookbook, breaks down cooking in to simple concepts of cause and effect.  I very much would recommend a person to acquire this book for any cookbook collection, as it is useful in reference as well as recipe.

A Taste of Historic Lynchburg

 The one thing about having a cookbook challenge with rules is that your need to follow them rules once you have made them.  The rule that I am talking about at this time, is that any cookbook acquired during the challenge must be utilized.   I don't actively look for cookbooks most of the time, but that does not mean that my collection is not growing. My mother-in-law enjoys traveling and in her travels she came upon A Taste of Historic Lynchburg cookbook.  I now have said cookbook. 

This is a charming cookbook. It is the sort of cookbook that makes you feel like a lot of little old ladies sat around at a bridge game and decided that create a cookbook. There are a variety recipes in the pages, that range between delicious and horrifying. I don't know if I have ever had so much fun reading a cookbook, each recipe unique in its own way.  I sometimes wonder if we can do genealogy through tastebuds, because if so, this book would remind everyone of their grandmother. Especially if their grandmother loved jello. 

If you are ever around Lynchburg, I would recommend picking this cookbook up. While not every recipe is a winner, every recipe has merit.  If you ever get the courage to try some of the more inventive jello salad recipes, such as A Man's Salad (spoiler it is has jello in it) or Cinnamon Applesauce Salad (it also has jello in it, along with cinnamon candies) I suggest that you take a nip of the famous Jack Daniels Whiskey.  It is amazing what is normal when you have a hit or two of whiskey before, after and during making some of these recipes. I, sadly did not have any whiskey while cooking, because I don't think it is wise to mix frying anything and whiskey.  I have burned myself sober making cookie bars.  It was is my goal not to burn or maim myself in the kitchen. 

I had a lot of recipes to choose between. I found that I couldn't pick just one. I picked two. Nothing says southern cooking like fried chicken.  Buttermilk Fried Chicken (page 32) was simple.  The directions were clear and concise. I really appreciate that. Fried chicken is delicious.  Buttermilk Fried Chicken is deliciously delightful and not the slightest bit healthy for you.  I would not recommend this for daily eating, but for an every now and then treat, I will definitely be making this again. 

The other recipe that I tried was Drop Cookies (Page 89). Drop Cookies are no bake chocolate oat cookies. I wanted to follow this recipe to the tee, however I believe there is a typo in the recipe. I have a hard time believing that any cookie would call for 1/2 cup of chopped nutmeg. In my limited experience of baking, nutmeg has always been used sparingly.  For the sake of making these cookies edible, I nixed the nutmeg.  I will try this recipe again in the future, but try it with a 1/2 cup of nuts.  

Catch 22- My Thoughts

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller is a book that many people have probably not read. That is unless they had taken a course that made it part of their required reading to earn a favorable grade.  I must have missed class the day it was assigned, because I had never read Catch 22, even though I was quite familiar with the phase, Catch 22. (Catch 22 = Dammed if you do, Dammed if you don't.)  I don't know what exactly possessed me to read Catch 22. It could have been the curiosity about where such a phase came from, or it could have been that my husband spoke warmly of the book. I suppose it doesn't really matter what brings a book into my hands to read, because devouring words is a pass time that I enjoy.

My friend, Andy asked me what I thought of Catch 22. The answer to that question left my mind utterly blank. What did I think of this classic novel? Part of me flip flopped from love to hate on it and then back to love.  I don't think it is love or hate when it comes to Catch 22.  I think that saying I loved it or hated it, would be too simple of answer, and not a true answer at all. It took me a long time to figure out how I really wanted to answer that question.  (By really long time, I mean it took me seven months to come up with an answer.)

Let me start by saying that I did not hate the novel.  The novel frustrated me, because I could see a lot of the dammed if you do, dammed if you don't situations being replicated in my professional life. Those sort of situations are like a coin that leaves everyone unsatisfied with the out come.  The frustration that I find professionally at times, made me frustrated when reading the book, because I just wanted to smack the characters and tell them to quit being idiots.  It is really hard to smack fictional characters, and if anyone can tell me how to do it, I would be very much interested. The thing is even though some of the characters border on ridiculous, you can't help but feel sorry for them because they don't know any better, and even if they do know better, they don't know how to change it.

It is that conundrum of how do you reach your goals without a clear path.  That gave me a lot to think about in this book. This book is about men that want to fulfill their duty, keep their sanity and go home. Much like the normal work day. It sounds simple. Sometimes the simplest thing is the hardest thing to do. I can understand why my husband  praises the book.  I can completely understand why the phrase Catch 22 is popular, even to those people that have never read the book, because there have always been situations that there are no absolutely correct solutions for.

I wouldn't say that I have a love for the book, but more of a respect for the book and all that it made me ponder.  I feel like I am a better person for having read the book, and I think that even if it isn't your cup of tea, that sometimes you need to read books like Catch 22, just to balance out your point of view and remind yourself that sometimes there are no easy answers.  We all just do the best that we can to maintain the grip on the sanity we do have and sometimes we have to do something a little out of the normal just to balance ourselves out.


P.S.- Andy, Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.  Next time will be quicker.

And That is What Fennel Tastes Like

Chocolate Fennel Pudding

 I blame my mother for a good amount of my cookbooks, and I think that she would be alright with that sort of blame.  I don't think that the blame that I have multiple books on how to prepare food to sustain my life is going to leave her with too many sleepless nights. In fact, I think she would be rather proud that I am not living off of Ramen Noodles and hot tea.  

When I was in the early stages of living on my own for the first time, my offered me some cookbooks that she had no use for, and I took them. Then I never got rid of them, because I have problems getting rid of books in general.  In the mix of books that my mother gifted me were three Food & Wine cookbooks.  They are also one of my favorite cookbooks, which means I had to go out side of my comfort zone to find something that I had not ever made or modified.  That something ended up being Chocolate Fennel Pudding out of the Quick from Scratch- Herbs & Spices Cookbook.

I want to believe that anything in chocolate is wonderful. I really want to believe that. I feel a little bit like XFiles when I say that.  However, fennel might be pushing that theory.  I do no like fennel, anise, black liquorish, horehounds or anything else of that ilk.  I want to like fennel, because it is used in Indian Food and Indian Food make me happy, and tastes like an explosion of awesome in my mouth every time I have it. My sense go in to overdrive, and the rich heady flavor of Indian Food makes me believe that peace can be found in a bowl of sauce and rice. I sincerely want to have affection for  fennel, which is why I tried this recipe. As a side bonus, I have never made a pudding from scratch, which sounded a little bit like alchemy according the the recipe.

I didn't know you could do such things with just cream and eggs and chocolate. It was amazing. It was fabulous. It actually turned into pudding, which had me hopping around my kitchen like a deranged rabbit celebrating that my stove top pudding actually looked like a pudding, in all of its pudding glory.  The final test was how did it it taste. Can I love fennel?  This question could only be answered with a spoon. Bravely I dipped my spoon into the hot pudding and tasted it. It wasn't bad. It didn't kill me. I could eat it warm and ignore the fennel aftertaste. Scooping the pudding out of the pot, I concealed it in a container and put it in the refrigerator.  Pudding is meant to be cold.

Pudding is like alchemy. Once the pudding cooled, it revealed its true flavor.  Holy Fennel, Batman!  It was like a black liquorish nightmare. It was strong in flavor and overpowered the mighty chocolate flavor.  Fennel was not happy being a byline to chocolate and stole the limelight of the pudding. The flavor of fennel demanded to be front and center like a prima donna. I couldn't consume it in pleasure, the force of the fennel was too strong for me.  Thankfully my husband, who is immune to the fennel stepped up and saved me from the pudding of doom.

While I was not able to conquer the fennel in this round, I was able to made a pudding, which I have since duplicated minus the fennel. It was a delight.  I am pleased to with this new ability, and some what ashamed of the amount of pudding I intend to make in the future.

Let's Pretend They Are Dead

I once joked that I am of the product of when two black sheep get together and breed. Not actual sheep but the figurative family sheep. Both of my parents are not in the slightest bit what one would call close to their siblings or other bits of immediate family other than possibly me. And the only reason we are close is because  I am one part science fiction mixed with two parts rum. (I might have my ratios off, because I think you muddle up some charm in there and serve it over ice, kind of like a Caipirinha, but I could be exaggerating.)

It isn't easy to find the family connection. In fact it take quite a bit of effort and cheek biting. However I found a way around it, that doesn't make me go cross eyed. All I needed to do was to go back further and try and find the beginning. I am not talking about the beginning where the family ties got frayed, but the beginning of the family itself.  My family has an unspoken motto "Let's Pretend They Are Dead".  If there is something that ruffles our delicate sensibilities, if becomes easier to pretend that they are dead and keep moving than to do the difficult thing and work it out. Nothing cuts like family, and sometimes the cuts never truly heal. 

This motto has worked marvelously in daily life, but has made genealogy quite interesting. I am constantly amazed at what I discover when doing genealogy. I find flawed people in the pages of history.  They are messy with their marriages, rural in their location and tend to spread out like molasses in the sun.  Despite common beliefs, not every one is dead. When you stumble across the living, it is awkward messy and sometimes really beautiful. I am amazed that I found a strong family connection in the headstones of graveyards, and among old census records.  In a time of divorce, remarriage and seven degrees of separation, the realization that the endurance of a blood line lies with in the very breathe you take, is remarkable and humbling.

I think that I found myself a sort of inner peace that I didn't was missing until I took up genealogy. My family is still complicated. It is still messy and incredibly hard to connect with my family, and it may never get better or it might. Connecting the lines between the generations  and solving the mystery of my lineage makes coping with the living a little less horrible.  Nothing is truly ever written in stone, until you are under the stone, and then it is all left up to interpretation.

If you are interested in taking up the rewarding adventure of genealogy, I would highly recommend using Familyseach.org. It is an easy to use site, that does not cost anything. It is a great site for those that can only do genealogy in their spare time. 

Turkey in Mole

Wedding gift 3 years ago!

I am under the belief that almost everything made in a crockpot can be turned into a burrito.  You just have to widen your perspective as to what a burrito can be.  The possibilities are endless.

The William Sonoma Slow Cooker Cookbook that I got as a wedding gift has some of the best burrito filling recipes I have ever tried.  Normally I only one recipe out of this cookbook and it is for the Chili Verde.  The Chili Verde is a fabulous recipe and it is one of my top five burrito fillings.  However, because I have used this Chili Verde recipe before I could not use it for The Challenge.  

We used Chicken. Shh!

Turkey Breast in Mole looked delicious and Mole is not something I make, mostly because it is supposed to take hours.  Slow Cooker takes hours to cook, so it seemed like a perfect match to create a Mole with in.  I feel like crockpots are perfect for the weekends. It allows me to make something hearty and filling without having to spend a huge amount of time fussing over prep work and dishes.

Roma tomatoes from the garden.

Using fresh tomatoes and peppers from my garden made my kitchen smell like salsa. I love salsa.  I also love chocolate, but have never had the ingenuity to combine the two together.  I am pretty sure that a mole is where you take all your favorite ingredients and combine them together into something that defies explanation.

We substituted an onion for a poblano. 

The assembly of everything was not difficult in the slightest, but it did take more dishes than anticipated. Once all the sauce ingredients were sautéed, they then went into a food processor.  My food processor is a jerk, and has a million pieces to it, and if all the pieces aren't put together, then it won't work.  It easily fills the top rack of the dishwasher.   Despite the jerk ways of my food processor, the mole sauce smelled and looked delicious.

This was awesome. 

Tossing everything into the crockpot, I turned it on and tried to forget about it for 5 hours.  It was not easy to forget about the mole, since it was incredibly aromatic. It was spicy and sweet, with a salty tang in the air. It was a beautiful smell.

Shredding the meat into the sauce made me think of everything a enchilada could be if it tried really hard.  If you flip a few pages in the William Sonoma Slow Cooker Cookbook, they had the same idea with using this Turkey Breast In Mole as a filling for enchiladas. I was incredibly pleased with this recipe and will be using is again in the future.

Tart, Pie or Custard?

 I was meeting some good friends for dinner on the grill and offered to bring a dessert. Other than having been raised to never show up empty handed, I wanted to knock out another cookbook from The Challenge.  I have a plethora of cookbooks from the Hermes House Publishing and I have slowly discovered that some of the recipes can be repeated from book to book depending on the theme. Looking into the Desserts cookbook, I decided on a recipe that made me think of macarons.

I love macarons. I am not talking about macaroons, which are the coconut and egg white things that are chewy and for the most part forgettable.  I am talking about french macarons, which are a delicate meringue almond sandwich cookies that are often filled with hopes and dreams, or possibly a jelly or ganache.  The Almond Custard that I found looked like it had all the ingredients that belonged in a macaron recipe.  I have made macarons a couple of times, and the reason that they are crafted from angel tears, is because it takes the patience of a saint to make them.  There is a lot of precision and timing involved in making macaron cookies. The Almond Custard looked a lot simpler to make, and if it tasted like a macaron with half the work, it would certainly be something that I would try again.

Following the instructions exact produced a dense tart-like pie thing. It would win no awards in the beauty department in the way that desserts would go, but it did taste good.  It is more of a custard than I would have expected given the amount of ground almonds that is in it. It is not a replacement for a macaron, but it was not bad.  My preconceived notion that this would taste  like a macaroon ruined some of my appreciation for this tart like pie custard.  I think that if you were looking to make something a little less fruity as a dessert and a bit rich, I would recommend this recipe.  The fruit is understated, because you only use about two tablespoons of what ever jelly you like and it adds a delightful texture to the custard.

Lesson has been learned. Just because the ingredients are mostly the same, it does not mean that the out come is going to be the same.   To me this was a lesson in being judgmental and I am going to try and have a more open mind in the future with recipes and I should probably me more open minded in general.

Dixit: My Rabbit Likes Mushrooms

Dixit is a beautiful game that if you had to compare it to other games, it would be a cross between Pictionary and Apples to Apples with rabbits mixed in for the fun of it.  I discovered Dixit by watching Table Top with Wil Wheaton. I would highly recommend you to check out the Dixit episode on Table Top if you are a visual learner, because  I am going to explain things quite horribly.  (Not intentionally horribly, but I have come to believe that I am one of those people that can over explain, and therefore half kill any interest in playing. Trust me, watch the video if the below doesn't make any sense to you.) 

Yellow Rabbit Forever!

At the beginning of the game, we picked our rabbits. They are cute little wooden rabbits painted various colors. We had a full six players playing so ever rabbit was utilized.  Part of my inner monologue wants to glue little google eyes on the rabbits, but I don't think they make google eyes that small.  The object is to get your rabbit around the board as many times as possible.  Sounds pretty easy. 

Yummy Mushrooms!

The game board is a pretty path full of flowers and mushrooms with little stepping stones to mark progress.  I think the fact that it is full of mushrooms is the key, because some of us that are not that great at the game have their rabbit sitting on a garden path, eating mushrooms. Wooden rabbits love painted mushrooms.  It is a little known board game fact. Or I just have no talent at having anyone pick my card.  I like to think that my rabbit just likes to eat the mushrooms. 

Vote for me!

The person thats turn it is will pick a card out of their hand and put it face down on the table. They give a clue as to what their card is. Every one else puts a card down for that clue. What ever clue is give, you want vague enough that not everyone will get it, but specific enough that someone will get it. You also have to gage your audience as to how literal they are going to take a clue. Once all the cards are gathered, every one but the clue giver gets to vote on which card they think it is.

Clue: Shinning Light

 For example if I gave the clue Shining Light, most people will put a card down that had to do with light.   The  cards in Dixit are beautiful complex works of art and depending on the clue, the players can put almost anything down.   Here are six random cards where put down for  Shining Light. Almost of all them have some sort of light in them and one of them has the absence of light.  The question for the voters is if the person giving the clue is being literal with the clue Shining Light.  

When playing this game, I find I do better if I don't count of my husband to guess my card.  Despite how well he knows me and I know him, we really suck at guessing each others cards. If it is supposed to be one of those old married people bonds, I might develop it in the next ten years, because these last ten years have done not accomplished it yet. He very rarely guesses my card. My suggestion is to try and model your clues to a friend. It took me half a game to figure that out and my rabbit spent a lot of time eating mushrooms on the path and not going anywhere, because I was giving clues that I thought only he would get, and he didn't and neither did anyone else.  

Literal Shining Light

My card I would have played to that clue would be the man in the clouds. I would figure that everyone would put down something that had a light in it, and putting down something the opposite would give the players a pause and would give me at least one vote, which is all I really needed to make any movement on the board. If every one voters for your card, you get no points because you were to specific. I could hope that one person would vote for my cloudy man,  while everyone else would vote for the  literal Shining Light, which a girl in a with a candle inside a light bulb or possibly hand with the torch. 

My Card

You want people to vote for your card, but not every one to vote for your card in order to get your rabbit to move.  This is a beautiful engaging game, that keeps all of the players involved to the very end.  I would highly recommend this game. It is easy to play and a lot of fun. I look forward to the next time I get to play Dixit and I have even ordered an expansion deck, so that I have more beautiful cards to work with in the future.  Until I receive the expansion deck, I will continue the mental debate on if I should glue google eyes on the rabbits. 

I Am All Ears

There is something magical about good food. It brings people together.  Memories happen, and stick with you in a way that you will never forget.  Recently I had the pleasure of making freezer corn.  Freezer corn is not where you buy the corn from the grocery store,  and toss it in bags and call it a day.  Freezer corn is so much more than that. Really good freezer corn is a taste of summer at its finest.

My friend Lizzy let me experience what it really means to make freezer corn happen.  We drove out to the middle of Amish Country, where I saw more horse and buggies than gas stations, and through some family connections, I found myself in a field of corn that was ready to meet its destiny.  I have never been in a corn field. I have lived near plenty of them, and remember them to be full of poison ivy and corn flowers.  They were a thing of beauty and danger to me. Mostly because I have a high allergy to poison ivy and think that cornflowers are pretty. This field had no poison ivy, and was full of ears.  The ears have probably heard it all. I know for a fact it heard me trying to figure out the best way to harvest corn. I may have plucked 25 out of the 200 ears that we left with.  I am absolutely amazed at the speed that some people can pick corn. All 200 ears were in the car with in 20 minutes.  Complete with corn bugs.


 When you have 200 ears to husk and silked, you learn to find a rhythm quickly. You also learn really quickly that corn is a sticky. Not a little sticky, but very sticky. The reason sweet corn is sweet, is because of the amount of sugar and starch at is nestled in each kernel.  I am pretty sure that if you were to juice corn, it would be a type of cement. They type of cement that you would never really be able to get off your hands with a single washing and multiple washing will only make your hands smooth. I wouldn't recommend using corn to smooth your hands. It is not an efficient way to exfoliate.

Once corn has been husked and silked, it gets cooked in a pot. Thirty ears of corn at a time, is still a lot of corn. Once the corn is cooked it had to be cooled. Not just on the out side, but all the way down to the hot molten core. If I had a portal that I could zap the steaming buckets of corn to the middle of the arctic tundra to cool it off faster.  Since I do not have a portal to transport corn to a cooler climate, I got well acquainted with well water. Well water is cold. Cold water and hot corn in a bucket doesn't make the corn cold immediately. Lots of water was used in cooling corn down and  a good bit of it got dumped in my shoe.

I think it might be a tool of magic that was used to take corn off the cob. It resembled a knife stuck in a piece of wood that you run the corn against it like a mandoline. Only there is a higher risk of chopping a finger off if you aren't paying attention.   After the kernels of corn are separated from the cob, you are left with the gold delicious taste of summer.  Tossing it in bags, labeling them and putting them in the freezer for the future, makes it worth all the work that was done.

I feel like I am a better person for having taken such time to put good food on the table, and I feel a lot more appreciative of the work that  it takes to get food to the table. I don't think that most people when they buy a bag of frozen sweet corn in the grocery store, truly know the amount of time it takes to get it there. I already looking forward to thawing a bag of corn in the middle of winter and enjoying of moment where summer dances across my taste buds and reminds me that with great work comes great pay off.

Sweet Sweet Nuts

I will admit that I have a sweet tooth. It is one of the reasons that I have a fair number of dessert cookbooks. Like many people I know, there was a barbecue that I was invited to attend over the Labor Day holiday. One of my esteemed co workers was  hosting and I was pretty excited to attend. Good educate demanded that I should contribute to the feast.  I needed something easy to transport and that wasn't missing a slice out of it. The pie I had made the day before was out of the question, despite how awesome it looked with the ninja battle on the crust, it was no match for the fork and knife battle. 

 Flipping through the You Deserve Dessert cookbook by The Cooking Club of America I settled on something that I knew I could handle making and would not get disgusting if it sat out for hours, or would crumble if I hit a bump to hard on the way there. Sugared Pecans  seemed like the best option.  I had pecans in the freezer and cinnamon and sugar didn't sound too dangerous.  It was probably about as dangerous as getting lost in the driveway. 

Truth be told there is some danger in melting the sugar and cinnamon together on the stove until all the sugar has liquified, however the real danger is not in sugary molten goodness, but in the end product.   Dividing the nuts between home and the barbecue it quickly became apparent that the pecans were pleasing to the palate. It was really easy to try just one or two and then go back for one or two more.   

I have a couple of books from the Cooking Club of America that I had some what been gifted. It was one of those gifts that you either pick something out or your get the entire collection. I did not need the entire collection, nor did I have room for it. I have four Cooking Club of America cookbooks, and sometimes that seems like too many.  Being well acquainted with Taste of Home cook books, the Cooking Club of America cookbooks have the same sort of feel to them. They are all member submissions and all of the recipes ranges from medium to easy cooking skill.  I almost feel like I cheated by using this recipe, because it was so simple, that if I actually thought about how to make Sugared Pecans, I  wouldn't have needed a recipe in the first place. I would not be surprised if I see the same recipes and possibly the same contributors in both of the publications. 

Challenge: 10 of 60 completed!

Let Us Pretend This is Peach Pie

 I took a week off of the cookbook challenge to focus on canning, and then took another week to be a guinea pig for GAT and Lizzy in their cookbook challenge.  I then got wrapped up in reading The Enchantment Emporium, by Tanya Huff. I will write  a review on that later, but the one thing I will say about the book right now, is that it put me in the mood for pie.

Realizing that my hiatus in the challenge will only put me further behind than I already feel that I am, and knowing that I had fruit that I needed to use up, it was time for me to crack open a cookbook and get back to work. Choosing one of the many dessert cookbooks that I have at random, I figured there had to be a pie recipe in there somewhere.

Pie Time!

 When I think about pastries, I think about turnovers, pies, and filo pastry. I do not often think of savory dishes; but surprisingly there were a fair amount of savory dishes available in The Best Ever Pastry Cookbook.  I had pie on the brain and could not be persuaded despite how delicious some of the dishes sounded.  I was in luck. There was a lovely recipe for Peach Leaf Pie. It even had a crust recipe and didn't have the audacity to assume that I know how to make a crust.  It has been years since I have made a pie from scratch, much less made a canned pie.  Crust has never been something I have excelled at. Pie isn't something that is normal in my house. Cakes and cookies reign supreme, until now. Pie might become the new cake.  Not to mention it freezes better.

Bald Not- Peaches Peaches

I pulled out my ingredients and looked over the recipe and I seemed that I had everything, but one critical item needed for peach pie. I didn't have any peaches. The peaches that we did have, were used the night before on the grill with and devoured with vanilla ice cream. It was a noble peach death.  All was not lost. I did have some nectarines and a few golden plums from the local CSA.  Nectarines are just bald peaches, or at least that is what I am pretending.

Balls

Assembling the dough was easier than I thought and I am pretty lethal with a fork. Mostly because out of all the kitchen gadgets and thing-a-ma-jigs that I own, I do not at this time own a dough blender.  I decided that I could just fork it into submission. It worked, and that is all that matters.  Molding the dough into two butter filled balls, I shoved them into the fridge and started to slicing the fruit.

There is something magical about fruit in sugar. It gets all syrupy and sticky. It is delicious and I could have eaten a bowl of the not peaches in sugar and fallen into a sugar coma if I were a person of less restraint.   Rolling the dough out, I filled the center with the delicious goodness of seasonal fruit goodness.

Iggins in the Cabinet

The recipe called for dough to be cut out into shapes of leaves and piled onto the pile and a very beautiful time consuming passion pattern. I do not have a leaf cutter. The idea of doing it all by hand while I have I have an Iggins begging for my attention or cat food did not entice me to cut out three dozen dough leaves by hand, add veins to them and arrange them onto the pie.  I do however have ninja cookie cutters. Pie crust is nothing but a dough, and cookie cutters are made to cut through dough. It was perfect. My pie is covered in ninjas.  They are in a constant battle over the peaches. It is awesome.

I think that I will make more pies in the future and that they are more visually appealing to me when decorated with things that appeal to me.  I think that the Peach Ninja Pie would appeal to people. Especially if no peaches were harmed in the process. Maybe for Thanksgiving I'll make a Blueberry Dinosaur Pie, or a Sour Apple Snowflake.

In other news. Two more cookbooks have been added to the challenge. My mother in law brought me a lovely cookbook back from down south, and I compulsively bought a new cookbook and chocolate. My rational was that I didn't own a chocolate cookbook, and I needed more chocolate in my life. I will be updating those books to the list on Library Thing soon. Total number of cookbooks is now 60. Total of 9 out of 60 have been completed.