The Joy of Cooking

I read this article on cnn.com this morning, a kind of "Behind the Music" on The Joy of Cooking cookbook. Really interesting. I, of course, have The Joy of Cooking (most cooks do) and it has always been a first-stop when I want to learn to cook something I've never attempted. The back story was new to me, but very interesting.

I remember being a newly-married and pulling this book out to learn how to make mashed potatoes for Mark. I'm sure they sucked, but it wasn't the book's fault.

When I finally learned to cook, the pineapple upside down cake was one of my first big successes. Mark loves a pineapple upside down cake, and the recipe from this book is awesome. AWESOME. After so many years of marriage, I had finally wowed my hubs in the kitchen.

After reading the article, I pulled my copy to see if I could determine what edition I have. The last copyright listed is 1964, but I don't see an official "edition" in the book anywhere.

What I did see was this note, hand-written in the front cover: "To Charlotte, Christmas 1993 - Best Wishes for good cooking. Love, Grandma Parker."

I can remember her telling me that she knew she wanted to get me this cookbook (every kitchen has to have one, you know), but she was most surprised at all the versions she had to choose from: hardback, paperback, large, small......she finally went with the mid-sized paperback with the spiral binding ("because it could most easily be laid open on the counter.")

And so I am reminded today of why I love to cook. Real cooking has so little to do with food and eating, and so much to do with the people we love.

My New BFF

As you may have surmised from my sidebar, the Great Wrong of Aught Nine has been righted. Mark and the boys got me a new Cuisinart Stand Mixer for Christmas.

Ahhhh, joy.

(ferdlings - if you would like to fix this photo for me, feel free.)

Merry Christmas everybody!!

The Great Vanilla Extract Experiment: The Finale

I baked my world famous chocolate chip cookies tonight, using my homemade vanilla extract. I have some observations:

1. When I opened the jar, the wonderful vanilla aroma I remember from yesterday had lessened, and it had developed a much stronger alcohol smell. Which is odd, because I thought vodka didn't have an odor. Hmmmm. It did still smell like vanilla, just not as much. Maybe I should have strained out the bean, but left the pod.

2. The guys tasted the dough, and said it tasted different. In a good way.

3. And then there was the finished product. I think I tasted a difference, but it may have just been because I was looking for a difference. Mark tasted a difference, and gave it two thumbs up.

So what is my conclusion? Since I usually use a high quality vanilla, I have, at the very least, made homemade vanilla extract that is as good as a high quality store bought variety, and likely better than an average store bought variety. Not bad for my first try.

Will I make it again? Not any time soon, as I have plenty left. And I have plenty of the spice house's vanilla on hand as well. But there is something to be said for simply knowing that I can do it, if I decide to. I really just like experimenting with things most people assume have to be bought and can't be made at home.

And now I have something new to talk about at cocktail parties when the conversation drags. If only I went to cocktail parties...

Sledding!!

Oh yeah. It snowed last night.

The Great Vanilla Extract Experiment: Part 2

Guess what today is??

If you guessed "Day Seven of the Great Vanilla Extract Experiment", you would be correct! Sit down - there are no prizes.

On the left is the "marinating" vanilla bean and vodka. On the right is a clean jar, and a mesh strainer fitted with a coffee filter. And now, we strain.



Finished product. It looks a little more like a urine sample than culinary gold, but looks can be deceiving.


All I can say for now is, it smells AWESOME. Really, really nice vanilla aroma. It tastes, well, I'm not really sure how it tastes. I don't go around drinking vanilla right out of the bottle so it's hard to compare. I think it has a strong alcohol taste, but extracts usually do have a strong alcohol taste. The real proof will be in the baking. I plan to bake my world famous chocolate chip cookies tomorrow and use the homemade vanilla. Stay tuned....

The Great Vanilla Extract Experiment

In its Sept/Oct 2009 issue, Cook's Illustrated did a feature grading store-bought vanilla extracts. (McCormick's won, FYI.) They also spoke of the merits of making your own at home. I had one of those "I can do that!" moments, and then promptly forgot all about it. But the Healthy Eats blog that I read did a post about creative foodie gift ideas, and they referenced making your own vanilla extract, a la Cook's Illustrated. I decided to go for it.

I get my vanilla from thespicehouse.com. I buy single-strength bourbon vanilla extract, and I pay $2/oz. CI recommended using commercial-grade vodka as the alcohol of choice, mostly because (with the limitations of the home kitchen) it imparted the least amount of alcohol flavor to the finished product. So I followed their lead.

I started with one vanilla bean (I pay $5.24 for 3, so that's $1.75 for the bean) and I picked up a small bottle of Smirnoff for $4.99 (there's a heavy shot or two leftover, if anyone wants it). It makes 6 ounces, so if this works out, I'm making it myself for $1.13/oz. That's a good cost save.

Here's how it went down:

Supplies ready.

Bean split and scraped and jarred.

Vodka heated.

Alcohol + Heat = Danger

Hot vodka added to jarred bean and cooled.

Lidded and ready for a week-long gestation.

All I do now is give it a week, shaking the jar once a day. I hope it gets darker. It's not looking all that impressive right now.

This will have to be seriously good before I stop buying the spice house vanilla, even if it is a lot cheaper. They make the best vanilla in the world (no matter what CI says), and you get a free vanilla bean in the bottle. But sometimes you do things simply for the joy of the doing, and this is one of those times.

Christmas Cookie Palooza!

Every year, I pick a Saturday leading up to Christmas and we bake Christmas cookies. The Norman Rockwell way. Roll out the dough, cut out the shapes, decorate, repeat. When the boys were little, it was more labor-intensive. Now that they are older, I have branched out a little. In recent years, I have started mixing it up a little and trying new recipes. Some old, some new, and usually, all delicious.

This year, the baking happened a little early. I realized on Thursday that we a)had nothing to do this Saturday, and b)had snow in the forecast. So I made sure I had all the ingredients and named today Christmas Cookie Palooza 2009.

First up: Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheels. An Alton Brown creation and new family favorite. They are kind of a pain to make, but we only make them once a year, so who's counting.

Next: the old stand-by Sugar Cookies. This the recipe I grew up making, and I even use the same cookie cutters. The angel is my favorite. A little fidgety to get the dough out sometimes, but the head and wings bake up really crisp while the body stays soft. You always get the best of both worlds in one cookie.

What's this? More stand-by sugar cookies? Fool you! These are Almond Crescents. Except in Christmas shapes. We love those Keebler Almond Crescent cookies you can only get at Christmas, so this year, I thought I'd take half of the sugar cookie dough, add almond extract, sprinkle the finished product with powdered sugar and see what happened. And oh, what happened. Delish!

Finally, chocolate bon bons. Got the recipe from the King Arther blog. They didn't spread like they should have, and I had a really hard time telling when they were done. But they were pretty tasty. One of those one-bite wonders.

What made it even better was that it snowed outside the entire time we baked. What a perfect Christmasy day!

Human Wrecking Balls

It was a slow night at Chez Malone last evening. We all found ourselves in the family room with nothing to do. So Mark starts channel surfing. He lands on a show on G4 called Human Wrecking Balls. The name intrigued us – I mean Human Wrecking Balls? How could you not be giddy with excitement at the possibilities.

What followed was perhaps the most ridiculous concept for a show ever. EVER. These two guys, the Pumphrey Brothers (and the name suits – you’re not going to find the name Pumphrey on any Noble Prize listing) go somewhere (last night it was a hotel suite) and destroy it. Just for grins. With their bare hands. And they have quasi-intellectual discussions about the various options for destruction (“Paul thinks I should use a side-kick, but I think a Crippling Axe Kick would be more effective here”, “A Crippling Axe Kick isn’t going to generate the force necessary to break that door.”)

I’m not making any of this up. How could I?

There are two secondary characters as well: a “structural engineer” who walks around telling us how hard this would be for us to do at home, and a hot nurse who, well, we all know why they have a hot nurse hanging around.

The destruction began with a challenge – both brothers had to destroy a vending machine and empty the entire contents without touching any of the items. The winner of this challenge got the honor of chucking a TV out the window later in the show. (Just FYI….the winning time was 43 seconds.) Once in the hotel suite, they took out the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom (they used a move called the “Powercheek” to remove the vanity – it’s exactly what it sounds like) and finally the sitting area. They brought in a celebrity guest for this part – some bass player for some band no one had ever heard of. Rock stars are all about hotel suite destruction, apparently. He had some good tips, but didn’t appear to be able to break anything himself. How awkward….

The final challenge involved taking out a wall. Not just any wall, the “structural engineer” tells us, but a wall made out of drywall and steel studs. He attempted to knock it down with a baseball bat and (surprise!) he just couldn’t do it. So the more effective of the Pumphrey Brothers was called in to do a “Shoulder Ram” – his signature move. (The less effective brother stood on the other side of the wall holding a mattress.) With a guttural scream and several well-timed commercial breaks, we finally got to see the effective Pumphrey go through the wall. We didn’t see any of the steel studs flying on the way through, but they were laying under his bruised body on the other side. (Hmmmm….)

And then, the moment we’d been waiting for all night: the TV went out the window. Followed by a sink, a fridge, a dismantled dishwasher and some other stuff that was no longer recognizable. And that friends, was the show.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall during the pitch-meeting for this one.

Mark was so intrigued that he looked the Pumphrey brothers up on Wikipedia. Turns out, they are big shots in the “competitive breaking” circuit. Who knew there even was such a thing? One of them got his start jumping off the top of a shed through something like 10 feet of solid ice. The other got his start breaking concrete with friends after school. I can’t remember which was which, but one had “crazy eyes” (you know – when you can see the whites of the eyes all the way around the pupil and you look scared all the time? He was the effective brother). The other wore the gayest looking shoes I have EVER seen – they were these white, square-toed loafer-like things - not anything I would wear to destroy a hotel room. And they didn’t do him any favors in the vending machine challenge.

The only positive thing I can say is that Team Malone hasn’t laughed that hard in a long, long time. And good news – the show is in its second season, so it looks like it’s a hit!

First Class Scout

On Monday night, Ben's Troop held their Court of Honor. Ben was officially awarded the rank of First Class. He has worked hard all along, but this one he REALLY worked for - he took ownership and got it done (and there is a lot to do) all on his own - mom and dad were just around for moral support.

If you know much about scout rankings, you know that completion of Tenderfoot, Second and First Class ranks are an accomplishment. Not that it will be easy from here on out (not by a long shot) but rank advancement from this point on consists of earning merit badges, service hours, and leadership. Star and Life and more like thresholds on the path to Eagle and don't have the requirements the previous three ranks have. We feel like Ben has crossed a major hurdle in his Scout career and we are very proud.

He also earned merit badges in swimming, music, and first aid. Way to go Ben!!

Creeping Along the Virginia Creeper

Regular readers of this blog (both of you) should be aware of my latest walking goal: section hiking all 34 miles of the Virginia Creeper Trail. Yesterday, we checked off another 3.5 mile section.

We parked at Alvarado and walked back to mile marker 5 (where we stopped last time, coming from Watauga). The Alvarado station is almost exactly halfway between mile markers 8 and 9.

We crossed the South Holston trestle over the "confluence" (love that word) of the middle and south forks of the Holston (very cool). We walked across some beautiful countryside, and through sections that had been blasted out of rocks. There was very little traffic on the trail yesterday, and despite being a little chilly in the shade, the weather was perfect.

I didn't take the camera, mostly because we walked the longest distance we have walked so far and I didn't want to slow us down, and because we carried a pack with water and snacks, and I didn't want to add any more weight than we had to. There is a bench and a really flat rock just past mile marker 5, so we stopped there for a snack.

On the return trip the boys decided to time themselves running for a full mile, so they ran from mile marker 7 to mile marker 8 (in eight minutes, in case you were wondering).

We left at 10:40 and were back at 1:10. We drove to Bristol and ate pizza at the Mad Greek. It was a really, really good day.

If you're keeping score at home, we've covered points 8 to 6 on the map below (since we've always done a "there and back" walk, we've actually covered it twice.) For our next trick, we may take two cars, park one at Alvarado and the other at Damascus, then walk straight through (about 8 miles).

What I'm Reading Now

Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser.



The Food of a Younger Land, by Mark Kurlanksy.



Drood, by Dan Simmons.

I try to never read two books at a time. I have a hard time switching gears, and I usually get bogged down and can't finish either one. So why then, am I now reading THREE books at one time? I really can't say.

First up: Fast Food Nation. Mark has been wanting me to read this one for a while now. It's all about the fast food industry in America, how we influenced it, and how it influences us. Right now, we're learning all about the corporate side of McD's. Interesting stuff.

Next: The Food of a Younger Land. Mark surprised me with this one for my birthday. Apparently, FDR's WPA had a division called the Federal Writer's Project. Out-of-work writers were put to work for the government writing essays for a book called America Eats. They were to write about the food in their hometown (or home region) - what made it unique and different. All essays were due for compilation by Thanksgiving, 1941. Most of them were late, and slowly trickled in during and after the holiday. And then there was this attack on Pearl Harbor and all those out-of-work writers weren't out of work anymore. America Eats died before it ever got started. Until Kurlanksy found out about it, and compiled all of the essays he could find from the America Eats project and turned them into The Food of a Younger Land. I've spot-read a little, and am now starting at the beginning. I've learned about auto mats and drug store soda fountains, how maple syrup is made and what famous dishes got their start in New York City hotels, and I've even learned that President Taft attended a Pee Dee Fish Stew in Florence, SC in 1909. The writing is a little dated, but it's been interesting thus far.

Finally: Drood. The only fiction book in the pile. Or is it? (just kidding - it is.) The narrator is Wilkie Collins (he was a real guy, but it's still fiction), fellow writer and friend to one Charles Dickens. Collins is telling us the story told to him by Dickens about a man (?) named Drood whom Dickens met the night of a terrible accident. Meeting Drood takes Dickens on a dark journey and ultimately leads to the writing of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens's famous mystery (fiction, or is it?). Good so far, but I haven't had too much time to dive into it (what with the other two books and all).

Wish me luck getting through these. I also got two new food magazines in the mail, so the reading is starting to pile up!

Can You See Us?

We're near the back.

And Guess What We Did Today?

I didn't take the camera, so we'll just have to go with the promotional flyer. For the first time ever, the four of us participated in the annual 5K Turkey Trot in downtown JC. You can run it or walk it (we walked it). It started at 8:30, and it was chilly, but once we started moving, the weather was perfect - I didn't even break a sweat!! We all managed to stay together, and we all had great spirits. Ben and I finished in 53:40. Mark and DP sprinted to the finish and beat our time by 15 seconds or so. We saw lots of friends and teachers - lot of people even dressed up - we saw Pilgrims, Indians, Turkeys, and even an Elf! It was a really cool way to start the holiday. It made me thankful for good health, for family and friends. We even talked about running it next year (we'll see :).

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!

Note: No turkeys were harmed in the completion of this race.

Guess What We Did Today?

And this year's ornaments.....

For Mark:

For me:

For Daniel:

For Ben:

And from our 2009 travels:

It's only a month away!!

What a Difference a Year Makes

I was perusing through some older blog posts, and I happened upon this pic, taken in early November, 2008:


It immediately reminded me of this pic, taken in early November 2009:


Granted, I'm all hunkered over in the first one, but it looks like Ben was probably just passing the top of my shoulder. I'm not hunkered over at all in the second one, and he's almost a full head over my shoulder. There's 40 pounds less of me in the second picture, which is also a nice change. And finally, I may just have to have that camera bag surgically removed from my right shoulder.

Saturday on the Creeper Trail

I've spent the last six months counting steps (1.2 million total). When the contest was over, I found myself sort of lost without a walking goal. I'm still walking everyday, but I'm looking for ways to make it interesting.

One thing I've decided to do is walk the entire Creeper Trail (34 miles total). Not all at once, mind you, but in sections. Mark and I walked from the trail head to the 2.5 mile point a few weeks back. Today, we took the boys and drove to Watauga. We walked west to the 2.5 mile point, and back (Daniel rode his bike for this leg). Then we walked east to the 5 mile marker and back again - about five miles in all.

It was sunny and 70 degrees. The leaves were off the trees, but it was still a spectacular day.

It was a good day. Before next October, I hope to knock out the next 29 miles. (I'm giving myself a year because some sections are going to be logistically difficult to pull off). Maybe I'll get it done sooner. Wish me luck!