Wine and Beer

Jeff and I spent the night last night in Omaha. He had a cricket match early this morning and rather than drive in at 5 this morning, we headed there last night. We stayed in my favorite hotel. An old Embassy Suites that has become a Doubletree. The rooms are huge and beautiful. The hotel was quiet. And breakfast was free. Even the pool and the hot tub (which we took advantage of) were warm.

The match was not warm. It was freezing. Drizzling and about 50, I spent most of the time huddled in my sweatshirt or watching from the car. It was not the best weather for a match. Jeff's team lost but they put up a great struggle. It could have gone either way.

But the weekend trip was invigorating. Jeff and I had some incredible talks this weekend. It was nice to just get away from everything together. I came home ready to do things. I've cleaned the kitchen, gone through some paperwork, started a box of things to get rid of, and finished putting away dishes. Right now I'm working my way through a bottle of Barefoot Pinot Grigio, one of my new favorite wines. It's a bit too dry for Jeff but I'm not complaining on having the bottle to myself. The other thing I'm doing is baking. After last week's banana bread I decided that I need to make more quick breads. This week it's beer bread.

I'm using the Super Secret Bierling Recipe for beer bread. It is:

3 cups Self-Rising Flour
4 1/2 Tbsp Sugar
12 oz Beer

Mix together until moist. 35 minutes at 350 degrees. Make sure to flour your loaf pan before baking.

Yep, that's it, that's the list. It's such an incredibly simple recipe and it's so tasty. Both Jeff and I prefer this yeasty bread a little undercooked. I love the soft interior and the slightly crisp crust. It has a unique flavor. I'm sure you can vary that depending on what beer is used. Most of the time I just use whatever is in the fridge, tonight Bud Light. So it's a wine and beer night. Following an incredible day. I'm so lucky. 

When Life Gives You...er Bananas...

You make banana bread. I had the day off work today for a beautiful four day weekend. And I had four bananas that were just about dead. At least they were well past the point where Jeff and I would eat them. For the record I like mine with still a bit of green to them. So I decided to do what millions before me have done when they have overripe bananas. I made banana bread.

I've been reading a blog called Eat Me, Delicious for years now. The author regularly posts vegetarian recipes that make my mouth water. And the baking ones make me want to dust off a taupe and become a pastry chef. So when I went looking for banana bread recipes to try, I started with Eat Me, Delicious first. I thought I had remembered a chocolate banana bread that would be fun to try. I found the recipe and tried it. Not only is the bread easy to make but it's incredibly tasty as well.

The recipe can be found here and other than the buttermilk and the cocoa powder, most of the ingredients were already in the house. Assembly took less than half an hour so it was quick that way. There was a ton of actual baking time (70 minutes in total) but by the fifty minute mark I was already drooling with the great smell. It's a rich bread. Almost dessert-like. The chocolate and banana are well balanced. It was even more amazing right out of the oven when the chocolate chips were still melty. I'll make this more often. So tasty.

Winter Foods (or Pomegranates for Dummies)

It was officially winter for me today. Oh sure I've already seen my first junco of the season (a birding sign of winter). I've already scraped my car a couple of times now. I've worn my mittens. I've had the heated mattress pad cranked up in the evenings. I've even brought out my winter coat. But the final straw was this morning when the house dropped below 63 and we had to turn on the furnace. Winter begins when the furnace kicks on for the first time. From now until March the house will rarely drop below 68. We spend a small fortune in heating bills but it's worth it.

One of my other signs of winter is that I get the sudden urge to bake. Each winter I typically bake a couple dozen cookies but I'm learning this year to bake bread. Last week I started with an easy banana bread that came out pretty well. I didn't have enough banana to make the recipe so I substituted in some applesauce which worked beautifully. It was a bit dry but very tasty. This week I'm thinking about doing a wheat and rolled oat bread from a recipe I found in a dieter's cookbook. We'll see how it comes out. I'm also suddenly interested in cake decorating. i picked up a couple books from the library and am going to spend some time with food coloring, sugarpaste, and royal icing. We'll see what comes out of that. I'll post pictures of both the successes and tragedies. I'm assuming both will be equally tasty. :-)

But my big excitement for November are those oddly shaped red fruits called pomegranates that I gorge myself on every year. If you're new to the blog, I wrote about my undying love of pomegranates. I devour them throughout their limited season until I'm practically sick. And about the time I'm starting to get tired of eating them day in and day out, the season ends and I have to wait 10 more months to get them. When Jeff and I were in the grocery store today I noticed that they were back in stock. I bought three and brought them home to rip apart.

For those of you who've never prepared a pomegranate, they can be a bit time intensive. You have to pluck the delicate seeds from the rest of the fruit. I used to waste hours on them until I mentioned my addiction in the blog and my friend Salt pointed out a much better way to prep them that I thought I'd share here. First, you want to pick your pomegranates based on weight. The fruit should feel surprisingly heavy. That means the seeds are filled with juice. Once you get them home you'll want to cut the top and the bottom off of the pomegranate. Try to stay pretty shallow so you don't cut any of the seeds. Once that's done, score the fruit along the white material. I tend to stay shallow for this as well. Then the fun begins.

Grab a big bowl and fill it mostly full with water. Holding the pomegranate under the water, start to gently pry it apart. The seeds spray purple everywhere when pushed too hard, so having the fruit underwater will minimize the mess. Rub the seeds off gently by pulling them away from the white foundation. You'll be able to pull off multiple seeds at one time by simply rubbing the tops of the seeds. The fruits will sink to the bottom of the bowl while the white debris will float to the surface. After all the seeds have been pulled off, I scoop the debris off the top of the water, and then strain the seeds. They go into a tupperware container to sit in my fridge. I've found them great for snacking or in salads. They'll keep in the fridge for up to 10 days.

Winter may be my least favorite time of the year, but baking and pomegranates make it just a little bit sweeter.

A Taste of Childhood

When I was young my mother would make the most wonderful sugar cookies from a children's cookbook that we owned. I remember these being a special treat and raved about them to everyone who I would talk about cookies with. So about a year or two ago, when I happened to find the cookbook in a second hand bookstore, I knew I had to buy it. And I knew that I had to make the cookies again. Just to see.

Well it took me a year or so to get around to it but today was the day. I stopped by the store this evening and picked up all the ingredients I needed. At home I was reminded of my mother as I started mixing the Crisco and the sugar together. Somehow that act makes me think of my mother baking. Then adding the rest of the ingredients. Rather than two dozen or so teaspoon sized cookies, I went with a baker dozen of tablespoon sized ones. After twenty minutes or so they came out and I waited impatiently for them to cool. Jeff didn't care for his terribly, but I thought they had the same melt in your mouth sweetness to them that I remember. What I didn't remember was that they were so crisp. After a couple more (just to make sure they were good) I realized why I didn't remember the crispiness. We never really let her bake them. We were always too busy eating the dough to get that far. Ah live and learn. It will make wonderful cookie dough.

The cookies were just a sweet end to a perfect day. It was just beautiful outside: warm, sunny, with a bit of a breeze. Jeff and I headed out to breakfast and then ran some errands around town. After that we headed home to clean up the porch and put up the screen on the front door. I'm so excited to be able to have the door open and have a breeze blow through. We wasted a day watching the birds, reading, and juggling out on the front porch. One odd thing was that we had a number of turkey vultures circling in the area. We normally see them near the creek but today they got really low near our complex, below the roof lines even. We think they were looking for our kitty who had wisely decided to go in a bit before. Sadly by the time I grabbed the camera to take some video they had moved on. A quiet day, a peaceful day, and I would dare say a perfect day.