C is for Cheerful

Christmas seemed to sneak up on us this year. In the hustle and bustle of readying ourselves to celebrate Christ's birth, we did manage to capture C smiling at his dad - certainly he had the proper Christmas spirit. It only took a week of trying to have the camera and smiles around at the same time! But it was worth it, don't you think? :o)

Giveaway

This week I have been wasting spending my 'free time' perusing the beautiful things on offer at the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day (well, really it's a week). I have found lots of interesting new crafty blogs, even some Kiwi ones, and entered for my chance to win a few of the giveaways. The giveaway closes on December 16th (or the 17th in NZ!) so you may want to check out the goodies and get some ideas. I know I have lots of new projects waiting in the wings.

A Fresh Start

So... it's been a while since I blogged. My early New Year's resolution is to try to get back into the habit, mostly as a way of keeping friends and family up to date. And a fresh start calls for a fresh look. This design appealed to me because it reminds me of a vision I had before we left NZ. That the changes about to happen in our life were going to be like dandelion seeds - spread wide, falling on fertile ground, and hard to eradicate (in a good way!) That certainly seems to have been the case so far. So here's hoping this resolution is fruitful and hard to eradicate!

Baker's Market

On a shopping run to Superstore on Saturday, Claire and I were intrigued by the hand-written sign for a baker's market at the side of the street. So we toddled on down, and found the tail-end of a yummy array of foodie delights. We bought a loaf of divine sourdough bread (which was gone within 24 hours) and tasted some salted rosemary caramels. Apparently our "faces lit up" when we asked if sponge toffee was hokey pokey... mostly because the answer was 'yes' and we didn't have to explain what we meant by hokey pokey!

We will be visiting again.

Here's the website: www.bakersmarket.com

Sopaipillas & Posole

Our visit to the US over Christmas had some pleasant foodie sidetracks. As well as savouring homemade hamburgers for dinner on Christmas Day at April's mom's place in Denver, we had the pleasure of staying with April's friends, Eric and Gentry, in Laramie, WY.

Here we are from left to right: Jada (3), Gentry... holding Eric... holding Macy (under 1), me, April, and Nathan.

They treated us to a special American meal, usually tasted in New Mexico (where Eric grew up). First on the menu was posole, a stew made with pork, green chillies, and hominy (corn kernels soaked in lye).

It was hot and delicious! (Sorry, the photo of Chef Eric was too blurry to keep.)

Gentry was trying to make sopaipillas (soap-a-pee-yas) for the first time and enlisted my help as a baker. We used this recipe, which is much like a scone dough. The dough is rolled out to a few millimetres thickness,

cut into pieces (squares and triangles are common too)

and then deep fried for a few seconds each side until golden brown.

The sopaipillas puff up in the hot oil and develop a crispy crust.

Next you split a side open and squeeze in some runny honey.

Gentry and I felt very decadent as we supped on sopaipillas and posole that night. The sopaipillas certainly help temper the heat of the posole, and they taste great when washed down with Eric's Belgian home-brewed beer!

I have since discovered recipes for both posole and sopaipillas (called Navajo Fry Bread) in a Christmas present I recieved from April's mom; "I Hear America Cooking: The cooks and recipes of American regional cuisine" by Betty Fussell. (Betty is a cousin of April's grandmother, and was featured in the August 2008 edition of Vogue.)

Bron and the Bearded Bagel Baker

Once upon a Saturday, Bron and her bearded beloved decided to bake bagels for the first time.

The library lent them "Bread: from sourdough to Rye" by Linda Collister. The bagel recipe looked promising (though they didn't recognise any of the recipes supposedly from Australia and NZ in the last chapter!)

They mixed the dough, let it rise, punched it down, then formed it into a dozen springy balls. Next they poked their fingers through each ball, spun it around on their fingers, and made a bagel-ly, doughnut shape. Then they remembered to take pictures for posterity!

After another rest, the dough was plunged into a pot of boiling water and Bron and her bagel baker took turns to deftly flip each bagel with a scoop.

Each doughy tourniquet was brushed with egg white, and some were sprinkled with sesame seeds.

And baked in the oven to golden brown perfection.

It was hard to wait for them to cool down.

Beautiful bready aromas filled the kitchen as Bron and the bearded one waited... and waited...

... and finally gave in...

... smothering their beauties with homemade strawberry jam! MMMMMM!

The Bakery

Ever since the food course, we have been much more conscious of what we are putting in our mouths, and what food we are buying. More about that in another post - suffice to say that we are now using organic flour whenever possible.

The flour is important because it is the most basic ingredient in bread-making. Our place has begun to resemble a bakery over the last few months as we've hardly bought bread from the supermarket since July.

It started when we returned to Canada in July, and I was home while Nathan did Hebrew at summer school and I got ready for teaching school. Long periods in an empty basement suite were filled with yeasting, waiting, mixing, kneading, waiting, rising, waiting, baking, and waiting while cooling. I tried my hand at a sourdough starter with rye flour and water. It was a bit of a hit and miss affair. I made a VERY dense loaf at one stage (pictured below) and threw a large amount of starter into the compost! The last lot migrated to the compost when I cleaned the fridge earlier this month. It was 'well fermented', shall we say? No recipe for you, as it was probably one of my least successful baking endeavours ever.

I reverted to my trusty basic bread recipe from our awesome Aussie friend, Susannah. Once you've made the plain white loaf a few times you can easily judge if the dough needs more flour or water by touch. If you double the recipe, it makes one large loaf, or two smallish ones.

Susannah's Basic Bread

2 cups of flour
1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon of dried yeast
1 teaspoon (or less) of salt [sometimes I put in vegemite/marmite instead of salt]
1 teaspoon of sugar/honey etc
1 tablespoon of oil.

Activate yeast by putting it in warm water with the sugar. When it is frothy, mix it with the dry ingredients and oil. Knead. Allow to sit in warm place, covered with loose cling film. After about and hour, knead again then form into desired shape. Place in cooking pan and allow to rise in a warm place for about 30 mins. Bake in a moderate oven for 20-40 minutes.

I also found success making cinnamon rolls - the Vancouver specialty. Here they are before... and after baking, but without their crown of cream cheese frosting.

Nathan tried his hand at making bread over the recent reading week, and has been bitten by a yeasty bug too... making bread every 4 or 5 days ever since. He experimented with whole wheat flour and decided that a mix of white and whole wheat was more pleasant than the dense rolls he first started with. Next he's going to try using spelt flour.

So, now that we've perfected this recipe, Nath suggested we try making bagels (one of the few bread products we have bought recently). A visit to the library was duly made, and we spent a fun Saturday morning making a dozen bagels to a recipe in "Bread: from sourdough to rye" by Linda Collister (adapted to include more marmite, of course!) My next post will be a photo-journal of our fun.