Luckily the title of this post isn’t describing a single dish. That would be disgusting. But the title does capture the essence of the yumminess that I will share with you today.
Remember the chocolate frog molds I bought? Well one can only make so many chocolate frogs before one starts to wonder what sorts of fillings would enhance the chocolate frog eating experience. Does the frog like peanut butter? Yes he does. Does the frog like Nutella? Oh yes he does. Not shown here are the safari animal chocolates I also made. I filled those with the coconut pastry cream. Magnifique!
This next item Heather and I created for an open house at the hospital. She is the medical director for the S.A.N.E. (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) program in Washington D.C. and they were having a little shindig that was in need of some treats. Being the quiche lovers that we are we decided to put a lot of yummy quiche flavor into the convenient size and shape of a cupcake. Much more filling and much tastier than those little party quiches you get at Costco.
Definitely something we would do again. We just formed some ready-to-bake pie crusts into the cupcake pans, added some emmenthal to the bottom, poured in the homemade quiche filling, sprinkled some more emmenthal on top and baked. They turned out great.
Tonight I found my Guacamole Tortilla Chips cheating on our favorite “Jack’s Special” salsa. When I came in I found one of the chips bathing in a bubbling container of spinach and artichoke dip. When questioned, the chip said the warm artichokes helped sooth the corns on his feet. I found this odd as he is a tortilla chip. So I ate him. He was good, as were 15-20 of his little green friends.
Seeing as I cater to a more educated readership I’m sure you are familiar with the mythological Greek sailors who ventured out on a 3 hour tour, only to be shipwrecked on an uncharted island for three seasons and three made-for-TV movies. Unlike most Greek myths this one had a happy ending though as the Harlem Globetrotters visit the island in the end and play basketball on a tropical island.
On Saturday I lived the gardening equivalent of the myth. My story centers around a rototiller that I rented for a minimum of three hours. Our previous garden was condemned and re-zoned for a child play area so this year we are relocating the garden to the side of the house, just inside our new fence. So Matt (brother-in-law) and I set out to relocate some raspberry bushes and convert a lawn to a garden.
I can honestly say that I fully expected to be done within the three hour period. I really wish I had been done when I returned the rototiller 7 hours later. But in fact I didn’t finish until a full 11 hours after I picked up the rototiller.
Given that you are an inquisitive reader you are probably asking yourself, “Do you even know how to use a rototiller? Are you sure you were using it correctly?”. These are valid questions but a rototiller really isn’t that difficult to use. Unless of course you are trying to till the most compact soil on planet earth.
Luckily I didn’t spend the entire time tilling though. That would have killed me. Clearly I’m not dead as I’m writing this blog post so you are probably wondering what I did the whole time. Here is a rundown of how I spent my 11 hours gardening on Saturday:
- Picked up rototiller at 10 a.m.
- Rototiller sat in car in driveway until Matt arrived. I’m not man enough to get rototiller out of car myself. I can’t remember if the guy at the rental shop needed help or not. I will pretend he did so as not to diminish my manliness.
- Waited for Heather to return so she could mark the garden plot Matt and I should till. She was off getting “deals” on kids clothing at a consignment sale.
- We use the rototiller to add on to the existing raspberry row. We have one raspberry bush and two blackberry bushes that need to be moved from inside the fence to their new home outside the fence.
- Matt notices lots of mature raspberry shoots and suggests we add a new row of raspberries. Seems like a good idea so we proceed.
- Matt and I realize that digging up grass so that we can till new row for raspberries is really hard. We use sod to beautify the location of two bushes we removed at the end of our driveway last year. All of these activities are very time consuming. If any of the transplants die I will surely cry.
- Notice neighbor is out mowing his lawn. Notice that neighbor starts talking with gardner who is mowing other neighbors lawn. Notice that gardner starts mowing neighbors lawn and neighbor is whistling. Neighbor has just mowed lawn for the last time. He says he got a good price.
- Matt and I rototill the new raspberry row. Tiring but not too bad.
- Matt and I transplant the new shoots. They are light and easy to manage.
- Matt and I transplant the raspberry and blackberry bushes. They are heavy and cause us great pain and suffering.
- I look around and notice the huge piles of sod and dirt on our lawn and sidewalk. I begin to contemplate how we might move it all and where we will move it to.
- At this point I imagined that the Harlem Globetrotters showed up and played basketball next to the new raspberry row. That would have been something special.
- Now time for lunch. Heather and Cassidy have finally returned with some sort of meat wrapped in flour. We eat and are happy.
- We begin tilling the new garden area. Drawing on our newly acquired knowledge that digging up sod is really hard we decide to just till the grass as well.
- We learn a new lesson: tilling grass is even harder than digging up sod. After a couple of passes with the tiller it appears as if an angry pickax-wielding smurf* came through making tiny little holes. Not the glorious tilled garden plot we hoped for.
- We rest for a bit. Tilling is really hard.
- After repeatedly tilling, resting and tilling some more we eventually finished. We mixed in a bunch of dung and some leaves I kept from last fall. The leaves were slimy and yucky. I hope the vegetables like them.
- Matt and Cassidy leave for some church barbeque. Heather and I have no such escape.
- I till a little spot in front of the house that has produced nothing but weeds and eye sores since we moved here.
- I return the tiller 5 minutes before closing. There is much rejoicing.
- Now I return to my previous conundrum – how am I going to move all of the sod and dirt out of the front yard?
- I decide that a wagon that can be used for hauling both yard junk and kids is the way to go.
- I find out that finding such a wagon is difficult. Three hardware stores and one garden center later and nothing. Turns out we have to go to Toys R Us.
- The family returns from Toys R Us with one unassembled wagon. It is getting dark so I quickly start assembling the wagon and Heather goes to put the kids to bed.
- Now I have a wagon but it’s dark and I’m lonely. The mounds of heavy earth aren’t helping the situation.
- I begin moving the earth mounds from the front to the back of the house. With each trip I try to avoid eye contact with anyone in the dinner party assembled on our neighbors back porch. I don’t think I’m invited and I’m filthy.
- It is very dark when I finish up at 9 p.m. I swear an oath against any animal that steals anything from our garden this year. They will suffer, oh how they will suffer…
In the end it was all worth it, even if the Harlem Globetrotters didn’t show up.
* Smurfs are tiny and would carry a really small pickax. This paints a picture of very small, meaningless holes in your lawn.
Growing up, the Pace Picante ad campaign focused on how their salsa was made in Texas, thus making it superior to other salsas. A typical commercial consisted of some cowboys engaged in discussions about their salsa. Inevitably the discussion would turn to where each salsa was produced. The “other” salsa always came from New York City. This both shocked and angered the other cowboys and the commercial would end with some sort of threat.
We never found out what happened to the blasphemer but I imagine it was painful and that his salsa played some part in the torture he endured.
I hate to break it to our friends at Pace but yummy salsa (and indeed chips also) come from up north. This post is dedicated to the best chips and salsa that have ever graced my taste buds. Let’s take a look at a picture of destiny’s couple.
The salsa is “Jack’s Special” from Garden Fresh Gourmet. The company is located in…
Ferndale Michigan
That’s right – Michigan. I don’t understand it myself and I’m sure the Pace cowboy would be shocked. I’ve lived in Michigan and there isn’t a lot of good mexican food there. But it’s true. The best salsa comes from Michigan. It is full of yummy vegetables with chunks that aren’t too big nor too small. We get ours at Harris Teeter but you can also find it at Costco where we live.
The chip situation is even more odd. Guacamole Tortialla Chips from “from Nana’s Cocina”. These chips hale from Manassas Park, Virginia which is also a far cry from Texas and the last place that I would think of when it comes to tortilla chips. Heather and I came across these at Harris Teeter a few weeks ago and we’ve purchased about 6 bags since. They are just amazingly yummy and yummily amazing.
We ventured to try their normal tortilla chips but they were just so-so, as our friends at Cooks Illustrated already know. There must be a symbiotic relationship between tortilla chips and avocados.
I didn’t get a birthday cake this year. At least not yet. The weekend of my birthday we were living it up at an indoor water park in Ohio. The following week we were catching up after living in up at an indoor water park in Ohio. The following weekend I went to my grandma’s funeral in Utah.
As of this morning it had been two weeks since my birthday without having partook of some chocolaty, buttery frosting sitting atop a light and fluffy yellow layer cake. To make matters worse, Heather installed a cable in the minivan that allows us to hook up our iPhones to the audio/video system. Now Addison and Luc enjoy their favorite Cook’s Illustrated podcast on making fluffy yellow layer cake everywhere we go (I see it as educational television).
Clearly something had to be done so Luc and I got to work. For those of you familiar with Luc’s ability to recite the Cook’s Illustrated apple galette podcast it will come as no surprise to you that he can do the same for light and fluffy yellow cake podcast. As I was going through the various stages of cake creation Luc would be sitting next to me repeating the narrator’s lines from the podcast. Hilarious.
Here is Luc, proudly sitting next to his creation. He may or may not have dipped into the frosting once or twice. Here is another one of him as we prepare to frost.
While making this particular cake I realized a couple of things.
1) Our oven is about 12 degrees shy of level.
I mean these cakes look like ski jumps. How can I work under these conditions? I think this may be reason enough to throw out the whole unit and get a gas range and two ovens. I just have to convince Heather that the situation is irreparable and our very culinary existence is at stake.
2) I love thermometers. Actually I already knew this but now I have photographic proof. Knowing the temperature of your food is the pathway to happiness. Here are two action shots from today. The first picture shows our chocolate while we wait for it to get below 100 degrees. The second is where we verified that the butter was ~65 degrees. The frosting turned out rich and creamy. We owe it all to the thermometer.
In case any of you are wondering, you should not a use kitchen thermometer on children. The probe is sharp, not smooth like children’s thermometers. No good can come from sticking a sharp ended tool into an orifice.
3) Bread knife bad, some knife I used to cut cake tonight good. In the past I’ve used the bread knife to slice cake. Perhaps this is why I have angst whenever it’s time to cut and serve. The cake always looks like it was a victim in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre after I’m done.
But today I pulled out some knife that came with our knife set, but which we had never before employed. It is skinny with a smooth edge and appealing curves. Just look at the nice clean cuts I made with it. Perhaps it is a cake knife. Maybe it is a knife for slapping butter around. Heather thinks it is a ham knife. I don’t know, but I like it.
My favorite part of tonight’s cake was that the cake isn’t even my birthday cake since we didn’t have people over to celebrate. That means we get to do the whole thing over again in a few days.
Before we part, let me show you the last picture taken of one of the cake slices while it was still alive. Shortly after this picture was taken the slice was devoured by ravenous beasts.
I’m a little sad right now. When I sat down to write this post I had an eclair sitting next to me. It was supposed to be my muse. I would write a little, take a few bites, savor the yumminess and then write some interesting and funny things until the effect wore off and I had to eat some more. The eclair’s name was “El Yumino”. Apparently my first few bites were too big as El Yumino is gone and I am left all alone, reflecting on what once was. Below you will find a picture of a sibling from the same batch that came out of the oven. I ate this one first which is why I figured that I could slowly work my way through El Yumino. Alas, I am weak.
Eclair
What is interesting about El Yumino is that he was part of the first batch of pastry to be cooked on my new jelly roll pans. Pâte à choux and I have met once before, a long time ago. It was one of the first pastries I tried to bake while on my mission in France. I was going through my french cook book, saw some eclairs and thought, “I like eclairs. I should make those.” If I had known then what I know now I imagine the result would have been satisfactory. But I was young and naive and had no idea how to properly mix the pastry dough in order to obtain a light and fluffy outcome. What I ended up with was something not so light and not so fluffy.
Tonight I decided to revisit my old nemesis. I added a little too much egg (Julia wasn’t kidding when she said “exactly 1 cup of egg”) so the dough wasn’t quite as stiff as it should have been but as you can see in the picture they cooked up nicely. The browning was perfect on every side and the interiors were light and airy. The jelly roll pans are definitely keepers.
You may recognize the chocolate on top from yesterday’s post. It is the chocolate Addie and I picked up at Fran’s Cake and Candy Supplies. Earlier today we employed it in the production of chocolate frogs, gorillas, monkeys and wart hogs.
Addie Drilling Things
Bam! I bet you didn’t see that picture coming, did you? After yesterday’s post I received an email from a disgruntled reader who wrote:
Although with all the talk about Addie I was expecting a picture of her with the spoils. Something to remember for next post.
I suppose blogs are like movies. If you follow a formula then people are happy and they will come and see your movie. It may not be new, it may not be fresh but you will please the general population and be able to recuperate the enormous fees you had to pay Mr. Cruise. Maybe for me that formula involves including lots of pictures of my kids. We will see. Here is another one just in case.
Luc in a tree
Today it was just Addie and I; sitting at home, twiddling our fingers, wondering what we could possibly do to pass the time while Luc played at Disney World and Heather did her doctor thing. Heather gave me “The Way to Cook” by Julia Child for Valentine’s Day and today seemed like an opportune one to try out the french bread recipe. Right now the loaves are in the oven but here is what they looked like earlier:
French Bread
My favorite part of the process is throwing water in the oven to create the steam that gives the bread a good, crisp crust. The bread should finish while I’m writing this post. I will let you know how it goes.
Now french bread takes a long time to make but most of that time is spent waiting for the dough to rise. Clearly Addie and I had to find something else to do in order to pass the time.
My birthday is next week and we are going to Kalahari Resort (not for my birthday mind you, but for some “sisters who live east of the Mississippi River” reunion Heather planned over my birthday). Addie and I decided that if I was going to get any personal birthday shopping in then it would have to be today. “Daddy,” Addie said, “we must go shopping for kitchen gear.” She’s so adorable that I just couldn’t say no. Let’s jump right to the end result:
Cooking Gear
Starting from the top left we have:
* Alisa’s pan that made it into the picture. She happened to be on the phone with Heather during our visit to La Cuisine so she got a new jelly roll pan. She is a lucky, lucky little girl.
* The clear plastic things are molds for making little chocolates. I got one with frogs and another with Safari animals.
* The festive container is Strawberry syrup from France. Like Kool-Aid but actually good.
* The shiny metal thing below the exotic syrup is a new dough scraper. Addison used my old one as a hammer and bent the corners. I was made aware of this fact when I tried to scrape dough from our wooden island counter and big gouges appeared in the wood. Oh child safety lock, whither hast thou gone?
* The long, white pouch is filled with coconut something. I’m not sure what I will do with it but I love coconut flavor and hate coconut texture. A pasty, coconut substance seemed like the very thing.
* To the right of white, coconut thingy we have chocolate for the heretofore mentioned molds. I was told this chocolate has had the cocoa butter removed and thus requires no tempering before putting it into candy molds. I’m a first time chocolate molder so I went for easy. We will see how the flavor of the chocolate stacks up.
* At the bottom of the picture are les pièces de résistance – my new jelly roll pans and accompanying cooling racks. The last two times I’ve made pain au chocolate one of our pans has deeply browned the bottoms of my precious. This can not be tolerated and the pan was given a dishonorable discharge. I hear it is now living happily at the Fairfax county dump.
You are probably asking yourself, “Where did Trevor find all of these great items?”. Well after the old jelly roll pan was exiled I began searching for a replacement. First I turned to Cooks Illustrated for their reviews. They rated the Lincoln as the best so I started calling around, trying to find Lincoln but nobody I called carried Lincoln.
During my research I was directed to Fran’s Cake and Candy Supplies. They were currently out of jelly roll pans but are one of the larger stores in the area. Since it had been a few days since I called I decided to stop by to see what they had to offer. As it turns out they have lots of supplies for cakes and candies but no good jelly roll pans. Nobody wants to leave a cooking store empty handed so I picked up some molds and chocolate so Heather and I could amuse the kids on Sunday afternoon before church. There were so many delicious candies and chocolates to look at that I became a little overwhelmed. This is the point where I caved and tossed in the coconut yumminess.
Addie and I left, content with our spoils, yet still yearning to fill the void that was our lack of jelly roll pan. The lady who helped us at Fran’s had recommended two stores – La Cuisine and Restaurant Depot but it was time to get back home and prepare the french bread for the second rise. There was no time to waste and the jelly roll quest would have to wait.
After taking care of the bread Heather was home. I convinced her to come along on my pre-birthday shopping extravaganza. Since Restaurant Depot closed at 4:00 we headed to La Cuisine.
From the moment I walked into the store I knew I was in heaven. It is a small space in old town Alexandria. I love the ambiance of old town and La Cuisine was filled with great cooking gear. I picked up two Chicago pans as well as two cooling racks, a dough scraper and the french syrup. I know that Cooks Illustrated didn’t rate the Chicago well but I’m also not sure which Chicago they rated. Mine was $13 (not $18) and when I asked what brand the pans were the knowledgeable sales woman told me they were the official commercial pans, not the “commercial” pan that is sold to the public through some distributor. I walked out a happy man.
Here is a picture of the old and the new:
Old and new jelly roll pans
I will let you know how the next batch of pain au chocolate turns out. I’m expecting great things.
French bread update: The bread is out of the oven and looks and smells tasty. I tried using a knife rather than a razor blade to cut the slits in the top of the bread. Bad idea. The knife was neither sharp enough nor skinny enough for proper slit creation. The crust isn’t bad and the taste is pretty good. All in all I’m happy with my first attempt.
Baked french bread
