Beauty and the Beets

Casseroles are there when you need them, like yesterday. So we had tuna & noodles, with beets & cucumbers. The tuna is from Epicurious. I consider the directions more suggestion than mandate. Add a handful of sharp cheddar, use any mushrooms you have, cut the fresh rosemary to 1 T. unless you love the domination. Also, salt everything as you proceed.

I no longer roast beets whole. It takes ages! Chop, boil, serve with sea salt. And I now cut cucumbers like they are in a Greek salad: peel the skin in strips, leaving about 1/3 of the skin on. Then quarter them lengthwise, seed & cut them in chunks. Serve with vinegar & salt, & maybe olive oil.

I'm paying more attention to veggies!

Sunday Dinner

Steph made squash soup for dinner last night. It's her mother's and grandmother's recipe – the best!

Steph's Squash Soup

1 box chicken broth

1 can vegetable broth

1 medium butternut squash (or pumpkin), chopped

8 ounces chopped carrots

thyme to taste

1 bunch scallions, chopped

Cook for 1 hour. After an hour add 2 potatoes, peeled & chopped. Simmer 1 hour more. Then mash the squash. (You can use an immersion blender, but your soup won't be as chunky as Steph's.) Finally, shred the meat of a roast chicken from the grocery & add that, along with salt to taste.

This makes a stew. For thinner soup, use more broth. Instead of the grocery chicken, you can add chicken drumsticks to the soup after the first hour of cooking. Or leave the chicken out & serve it as a side.

We had this with salad & apple crisp.

Bedroom window in Monticello (in North Florida it's sell-o, not chell-o.) home tour yesterday. This is my favorite image from the tour of modest front-porch houses to a huge, dim Victorian on a dirt road just a block from U.S. 90. There they requested we leave our shoes on the porch, or cover them up with blue paper cozies. Gorgeous reproduction wallpaper!

The kitchen looked a mess, so I decided to take a photo to show you I don't care much about cleaning. Then, in the camera viewfinder, it all looked beautiful. Here's the sink with Valentine orchid, blue bucket and mop, and some toasted pecans.

These chocolate macaroons are also beautiful! I think it's from Patricia Wells' A Food Lover's Guide to Paris.

Macarons Creoles

275° oven

1. Toast 1 C. almonds (I use blanched.) five minutes or until tasty. Cool 10 minutes. Grind. I use a Mouli mill, but food processor should work. I like the way they smell as I grind them by hand.

2. Melt 3 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate with 1 t. vanilla. Last time I used 70% Lindt and to tell the truth I think it was too chocolate-y. Experiment.

3. Mix 2 large egg whites (Don't whip them! I used to think it wasn't macaroons unless there were whipped egg whites.), almonds, 3/4 C. sugar at slow speed. Mix in chocolate.

4. Lightly butter parchment to cover cookie sheet.

5. Spoon 1 T. for each cookie. Flatten them slightly with a spoon.

6. Bake 15-18 min., until set, slightly firm, but not dry. Cool.

7. Melt 1 3/4 oz. chocolate. Add 2 T. heavy cream. Blend. Cool.

8. Make cookie sandwiches.

Here's a self-portrait I recently finished; she's looking at the world from her own angle. She's the size of a sheet of paper, made with cotton, lace, tulle, and a feather, appliqued and quilted by machine.

Made Me Think

Dr. Drew Pinsky (p. 28, NYTimes magazine, 3 Jan.) on what led him to specialize in addiction rehab: “I watched these people — these young people — go from dying to better than they ever knew they could be,” he said. “And I was like, ‘Whoa.’ In medicine you go from dying to chronically ill. You don’t go from dying to better than you ever knew you could be. That just doesn’t happen.”

I think that is hopeful.

Alison Gopnik, reviewing Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention, by Stanislas Dehaene: "We are born with a highly structured brain. But those brains are also transformed by our experiences, especially our early experiences. More than any other animal, we humans constantly reshape our environment. We also have an exceptionally long childhood and especially plastic young brains. Each new generation of children grows up in the new environment its parents have created, and each generation of brains becomes wired in a different way. The human mind can change radically in just a few generations." (NYTimes Book Review, 3 Jan.)

I think it's obvious that different stimuli shape our brains anew. I like the old stimuli too; I love the smell of ink, the feel of fabric.

Labels:

Perfect Sunday

Warm chocolate chip cookies with vanilla seeds scraped from pods, chopped chocolate instead of chips, and bigger than average size ...

Fire in fireplace

Christmas tree still up, other holiday decorations back in attic

New puppy in C's lap, helping him read the NYTimes.

Sunday: keeper recipes

$$ cookies

(from Saveur magazine. I first made them Jan. 7, 2004.)

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Mix 1 2/3 C. flour, 3/4 t. soda, 3/4 t. fine sea salt. (This recipe calls for expensive ingredients. Sometimes I use "ordinary" salt, chocolate, & vanilla, but today was over-the-top.)

3. Split 2 vanilla beans lengthwise and scrape seeds into mixer bowl. (I've been saving these beans for months!)

4. Add 1/2 C. unsalted butter. Mix.

5. Add 1/2 C. firmly packed dark brown sugar, 1/4 C. plus 2 T. white sugar, 1 egg. Mix until creamy.

6. Gradually add flour mixture. Mix until combined.

7. Add 4 oz. nuts & 8 oz. chocolate. Toast the nuts first & chop them. I used pecans because I had toasted ones in the freezer already. I used 2 Lindt Intense Dark 70% cocoa bars (3.5 oz. each) & cheated with a handful of Ghirardelli semisweet chips. Milk chocolate is also delicious.

8. Chill 10 min. in refrigerator. (Seems pointless, huh? But it does get cold.)

9. Line 3 baking sheets with parchment. Use a little less than 1/4 C. of dough for each cookie. Flatten them to 1/4" thick, I make them one at a time so I can space them at least 1 1/2" apart. I've made them bite-sized too, but that's not spectacular.

10. Bake, only one sheet at a time. Original recipe says 7-10 min., but 13 min. was perfect for me. I like cookies on the crunchy side.

11. Cool on sheet 1 min., then transfer to rack.

I forgot to count them, but it made more than 12 (which is what you get if you use 1/4 C. of dough for each) & fewer than 20.