Wednesday, March 30, 2011

TT: Hummus

You'll be surprised that I actually have a legitimate excuse for posting my Tasty Tuesday on wednesday this week - my internet's been down the last day and a half. It's been fun.

Anyway, this week's TT is yummy homemade hummus! (from DF)

Mix these things:

in a food processor. (two cans of garbanzo beans, half a teaspoon salt, half a lemon squeezed, a medium splash of olive oil, a medium scoop of tahini, a couple cloves of garlic)

(make sure to wash the garbanzo beans)

and use your fancy lemon squeezer to get the lemon juice:

mix it all and then taste for yumminess. And add whatever it needs (a little more salt and another tiny squeeze of lemon)

It helps to have a taste tester waiting nearby. 

(is quite yummy to toast the recent homemade french bread and dip it in the hummus)

Monday, March 28, 2011

Day 1: Meat free (also FBIHD)

Day 1 of being a vegetarian is successful. I have gotten a lot of good suggestions! I should have mentioned that I'm also going cheese-free this week, unfortunately. I went grocery shopping and my respect for vegetarians increased sevenfold. I felt that everything in the world had meat in it! Maybe I just automatically went for my usual foods, and then was dismayed to realize how many things had meat in them. In any case. Afterwards, I was talking to a dear friend who has been a vegetarian for the last eight years, who pointed out that there actually is a way bigger variety of produce, grains, dairy, etc, compared to the meat options. It allows, rather than forces, one to be creative. So. Fortunately, I have a couple people also giving up meat with me this week, so I'm not alone!

Also. My french bread turned out all right. A little flat, but still yummy, and the crust was just perfect!

aaaaand today's Fat Baby in a Hat is contributed by my wonderful brother.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

meat-free week!

passed along from here.

I have named Sunday as Bread Day. Today's attempt: French Bread. (unrelated to Tasty Tuesdays) French bread is neat. But it requires fridgeration for a little bit, so instead of actually baking it int he middle of the night tonight, I'm just gonna bake it tomorrow when I get home from school. I'll let you know how it goes.

In other news, my latest endeavor is to go vegetarian for a week. It started as a dare to give up cheese for a week (something that almost pains me more than giving up meat), but then I started thinking about it and decided to give it a try. I love meat. A whole bunch. And I'm not sure how to live without it. Sooo... does anyone have any good meatless recipes? I need some help.

Friday, March 25, 2011

This Moment: Red Wing, MN from the top of Barn Bluff


{this moment} - A Friday ritual begun by Soulemama and stolen from Eliz. A single photo (or more) - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

TT - Orange Tart

This is a recipe I found when looking for things to do with marmalade. I tweaked it a bit – adjusted due to the lack of some ingredients and. Other things. Sorry it had nothing to do with biscuits or chocolate! April Fools!

Step One.
Put on some music. I have chosen the Mozart Requiem (right now it’s the Confutatis. Quite appropriate for baking!)

The Shell
1 ¼ cup unbleached all purpose flour.
1 Tb. Sugar
Pinch of salt (if your butter is unsalted – mine was salted so I left this out!)
10 Tb cold butter cut into small pieces.
1 Tsp. finely grated lemon zest (you may remember the last time I zested lemons – today I just used the boughton kind)

Mix the dry ingredients, then add the butter and mix thoroughly. Add no more than 3 tsp of water, one at a time, until the dought JUST holds together in clumps. Press the dough together into your pan, and refrigerate for half an hour. If you happen to have a fluted tart pan like the recipe calls for, good for you – use it. I used just a pie pan, and only raised the edges about halfway. Half pie. (1.57)

Set oven to 400 degrees. Use pastry weights or dry beans, or another smaller pan for about the first 15 minutes, til the edges are golden. (Yellow is gold, green is drab, red is carmine, blue is azure, and I can't remember the other one) After 15 minutes, take out the weights, reduce the heat to 375, and continue to bake until it is golden all over, another 15ish minutes.


While its cooling, Put on some tango music. I recommend Yo Yo Ma playing Piazzola. (Also, drink some green tea and spill it down your front. Cause that’s how we roll here) Also. Eat a grapefruit.


...and make the filling.

The Filling
You need:
3 Tb butter
2 cups milk
3 Tb cornstarch (I substituted 6 Tb flour - it worked just fine)
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. pure vanilla extract

Brown the butter in a saucepan, and then put it aside in a bowl. Nom!

In another bowl, whisk 1/4 cup of the milk with the cornstarch. Whisk in the eggs.
In a medium saucepan, bring the remaining 1 and 3/4 cups milk, the sugar, and salt to a boil over medium heat. Take the pan off the heat, whisk about 1/4 cup of the hot milk into the egg mixture, and then whisk the egg mixture into the hot milk. Return to medium heat and continue whisking until the filling boils and becomes very thick, 30 seconds to 1 minute. Off the heat, whisk in the brown butter and vanilla.

And to get the full effect of the Tasty Tuesday, you should completely skip reading these directions, mix everything together before realizing the egg-milk-heat-order of happenings, and then also realizing you only have one egg left, so you can't start over. So you run next door to borrow one from dear 90-year-old Marge, who assumed that you were the girl coming to cut her hair.
But then start over and do it right.

Spread the filling evenly in the tart shell and set aside at room temperature while you prepare the topping.



The Topping:
Put on the song “Lady Marmalade” and sing along to it.
Enough marmalade to spread over the top - about maybe a cup? I just scooped some.
Oranges. I had clementines. Way cuter. It’s not hard to make oranges look good. Just kinda start on the edge and make your way around to the middle. The most time consuming thing is just taking all the little peely white stuff off.
So, arrange the oranges starting outside and circling in.

Then, heat up the marmalade until it is liquidy. Strain the orange bits out of it, and then mix - they recommended Cointreau - all I had was honey bourbon. It sufficed.
  




Paint it over the oranges to give a glaze.
Refrigerate for an hour to let the filling set up. Yum.

Pretty!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

aaaaand we're back.

Our spring break was a large success, and a whole lot of fun! Here are some pictures.
Getting started early in the morning.

There is a lovely man I know in Nashville who has a very large collection of instruments. He had us over for tea, and we got to look at many of the things he owns! It was really interesting, and I will only post a couple of the hundreds of pictures I got that day. 
a fancy tortoiseshell frog!

a viol da gamba - a predecessor to the violin. 

it has a lady head instead of a scroll!


 This is a 1848 Vuillaume cello. It is the reason we came out there. It is a beautiful thing. 

see?
oh, and it's just in wonderful condition too. 

Other Nashville adventures:
Pancake pantry, with my two favorite White girls :) 

We visited the Barbershop Harmony Society (of which Danny is a member) and learned to sing a tag!
We all thought it was the coolest that it was the sort of place where the people that worked there just all stopped what they were doing to come sing with us. 


We saw Robert Kelly play a show in a neat little chapel downtown. (also performing was the fantastic Kristen Rogers - such a good random acoustic show it was!)


No trip to Nashville is complete without a trip to the Loveless Cafe. Nom biscuits!


We got all touristy and went honkytonking downtown! 
And went to Jack's BBQ. 
And went to the walking bridge. 

We had one nice afternoon, and we used it very well. 
The walking bridge was so very lovely that day. 

Some views: 
 
 



Chicago!
I was able to get such a good picture because we got caught in traffic on our way in. 


The bean. 

I am godzilla... 

We got to hold some very old and very expensive instruments - it was a very neat trip!



Coming soon - a Tasty Tuesday biscuit endeavor! (inspired by Loveless)

Thursday, March 3, 2011

SPRING BREAK WOO

In 15 short hours, spring break epic roadtrip 2011 will begin!

9 days, 8 states, 1700 miles, a million hugs.

Plans and plans:
driving, singing, munching, landing. violins, cellos, shops, food, southern accents, 60 degree TEMPERATURES! friends I haven't seen in a year, getting to touch a Vuillaume cello, station inn, popcorn, quartet party, movie, camping, (staying in town while the boys go camping), coffee dates at BONGO JAVA, roadtripping again, friend i havent seen since july, chicago! more violins, more shops. meeting up with a chicago based classmate (i love seeing people out of context!) back to red wing. BIRTHDAY PARTY. Hello, 23.

Back to school.

Epic.
Expect pictures.
(don't expect anything else for about 10 days though)