In a pinch...

As this busy holiday season comes to an end with New Years right around the corner, I feel a need to reflect on the wonders of the season. With summer ending, Halloween approaching and Thanksgiving rushing right up to your nose at light speed, it seems like every year we swear we will craft, bake, sew, wrap, shop, decorate or knit faster and earlier than the previous year, somehow we will make it better next year.

My, we are a hopeful species! Somehow though, it all gets done... or sometimes it doesn't.

This year's holidays was an especially bumpy one for our little family. Between small stresses, tube surgery for the little guy and rushing around, we found ourselves with an electrical problem in my little guy's bedroom on the day preceding Christmas eve.

Unfortunately, all this had a bit of a woe is me effect on my moral. I was quickly falling into the , "Oh my goodness what the heck else going to go wrong!" attitude. It is amazing how fast this can happen, you are riding along happy as can be and suddenly you are smacked by parenting or house ownership issues that just deflate you completely. Sometimes, the house, as much as I love it, can feel as much of a child as our child is.

That night, the eve of Christmas eve, I ran over to the neighbors to borrow a bit of foil I had run out of for our baking. While chatting with them I mentioned ( lamented and whined and moaned!) about our issues with the electricity of our little guy's bedroom. If you can imagine my surprise when the Dad mentioned that his brother (who also lives across the street) was a registered electrician. To quote Dr. Seuss, my heart grew two sizes that day.

The next day The Brother came over and helped my husband fix our problem. This sweet, kind truck driving man came to my house, got on all fours and rewired three plugs before finding the scorched one in our guest bedroom. He also installed new boxes, new plugs and got shocked all in a matter of two hours. He taught my husband what to do to fix the problem and saved us a bundle that we honestly did not have.

It is moments like this that I realize the joy of Christmas, and especially the joy of being loved. We are loved by so many more than we realize, those we see every day and those we don't, those we cherish and those we sometimes take for granted. It is in these times that it comes to my attention how much people mean to us, how much we really are not an island, how much our family is not just our immediate siblings, children and spouses, but really includes our friends, relations, relatives and neighbors, the people we recognize every day as we go about our business, shopping and lives. Sometimes the people we take for granted are the ones who you will remember and love the most.

Sunday Night Dinners

My husband and I have always been fond of a big, lovely Sunday night dinner. We love to entertain, and have found that family and friends love to be fed on a Sunday afternoon. They come over, have cocktails, great conversations and eat till we can eat no more!

This Sunday we had our friends Josh and Sarah over for a roast chicken dinner. Now, Sarah is a great cook, but she also has a fabulous figure and therefore watches every ounce of butter that passes through her lips. I am not saying that I am an oaf, but on Sundays I do not care about my butter intake. So, in honor of our dear friends we chose to make Julia Child's Roasted Chicken, Scalloped Potatoes and green beans. No one left hungry!

You can always tell a great restaurant by the quality of their Roast Chicken. Such a seemingly simple dish, it takes time, care and careful monitoring to really get an excellent crispy skin, juicy flesh and a wonderful chickeny flavor.

I tend to flavor my bird with salt, freshly ground pepper and butter, putting the bird in at a high heat of 425 and turning the bird every 5 minutes for 15 minutes. I also baste at every turn. After the 15 minutes, I leave the bird on one side and turn down the temperature to 350. After basting every ten minutes for the first half hour, I turn the bird to its other side for another thirty minutes. I repeat the basting every ten minutes and finish the bird on its back, breast side up with a few final bastings.


While a roasted chicken is a humble dish, few dishes really give you such a sense of family and home as a fresh from the oven bird. Think back to the old Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving or Sunday dinners and you always picture a large roasted fowl on a platter with the family ohhing and ahhing over the spectacle. It is a sight to behold. I am very fond of the simplicity of the chicken, but from a budgeting point of view, it is an easy dish to fit into the budget for a family. Even with friends, we always have left overs!

From the roasted bird, I can get two chicken sandwiches, and a pot pie or chicken and dumplings. Yes, it sounds like a lot, but when you add various other elements to it, it can be done. Also, I take the carcass of the bird and boil it to make stock for the pot pie or dumplings and keep the extra stock for the weeks worth of soups or to add to my dog's supper. This easy and simple dish can supplement your weeknights dinners and create a budget stretcher.

One word as far as quality, try to buy the best bird you can. I am such a thrifty shopper and coupon nut that I tend to go toward the cheapest birds I can find. But, I recently tried a Draper Valley Chicken which is grown here in the Pacific Northwest. The flavor of the bird is significantly different and just tastes magnificant. I would definately pay the extra little bit to get that wonderful flavor. My advice? Look for a sale, buy a few and freeze them!

Comfort Food

Tonight is a short and sweet posting due to the fact that I just spent the last three hours making a chicken pot pie and have over exerted myself. I am exhausted. It seems that being in my thirty sixth week has caused me to be very, very tired, especially as I work my last week of work.

Regardless, I chose to make a chicken pot pie ~ a dish that always warms my soul. There is something about creamy vegetables, chicken and mushrooms that blends with the flaky, herby crust that just fill you up in every way. Sometimes, when you've had a bad day and you are tired, a chicken pot pie will give you the lift you need.

I like to make my pot pie as a leftover meal. Sunday, we had a roasted chicken that was wonderful. This allowed me to use the leftover carcass as a base for the pie and now we still have leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

So, I bid you good night as I sit here in a pot pie induced stupor that will only get better the second I go lie down in bed.

Consomme and Clarity...

"In the timbre of my voice, the shape of me, my response to another's misery or happiness, in my affections and prejudices, my flavors, so to speak, I am like consommé." - Henri Charpentier

While at work today, I began to think about the properties of a good, wholesome consommé. Consommé, by definition is a clear soup of a richly flavored stock that has been clarified and refined. I remember starting to make consommés in my culinary arts classes by combining ground chicken or turkey, egg whites, vegetables, tomatoes and stock, a cheesecloth filled with spices and herbs, and allowing it to slowly simmer for about fifteen to thirty minutes. The key to my beloved consommé was to never let it boil - boiling make the proteins get tough and therefore gives you a cloudy consommé and is most unpleasant. Once the broth has simmered, the proteins form a raft of the meat, vegetables, tomatoes and egg whites which then trap all the impurities of the soup. After it has reached the desired clear, flavorful consistency, the soup is strained through a fine metal sieve lined with a coffee filter and then the fat is skimmed off the soup, dished into your loveliest soup bowls and garnished with anything you desire from perfectly cut vegetables to herbs, scallions, noodles or egg yolks.

Now, this is a long and very tedious process that takes a whole lot of prep time, cook time and serving time. I am not going to mince words and say that it is easy, that it is not infuriating and aggravating when you are making this delicious soup and find your raft splits into thirds and you are trying to strain it and it is getting little particles all over the place. It is a pain.

But the point of consommé is that it is worth it. It takes a long time and careful care and attention but the results are impressive and quite beautiful. Few dishes are as simple and elegant as a perfectly clear consommé served as a first course. Along with its beauty, few dishes are as nutritionally sound as a fat free, protein rich consommé. Therefore, this soup that takes careful work to make, a careful watchful eye and patience makes it one of the world's most complex and carefully thought out dishes, a dish any chef can be proud to serve at his or her table.

But I have digressed from my original point: thinking about consommé at work. Why was I thinking of consommé at work? No, not another pregnancy craving, although those do come more often lately. Henri Charpentier said this lovely line in order to show a similarity between the thought that goes into a beautiful bowl of consommé and the thought that should go into every action and thought that we have. Whether it is my response to your joy or misery, my affection for you, my tastes, my style, my being - all these things should be carefully considered and attended to such as one attends to a lovely soup. Before reacting, before judging, before living, one should carefully judge what goes into the pot, what effect it will have on the previous and future ingredients and what the final outcome will be. Will anger cloud my soup? Will hastiness cause the raft to break? Will my eagerness cause a greasiness and therefore cause me more work later in the process to completion?

I have often believed that when dealing with our own lives, our own friends and our own homes and families, we act eagerly and hastily, without much contemplation to what our actions and opinions will do to those ingredients that surround us. The same goes into what we put on our tables. Just to get something on the table, we eagerly throw whatever is around on a dish without much thought to taste, function or meaning. Maybe a little thought and intention will save us from a future of broken rafts, greasiness and cloudy judgments. Maybe a little deliberateness causes a clear point of view, a beauty of thought and a perfectly satisfying simplicity that can only come from consommé.

Six weeks to go...

Not quite yet a Momma, I am starting this blog in order to help pass the time as I wait for my son to finish baking. I have six weeks to go, getting more and more tired and cumbersome as the days go and finding myself staring at way too much pointless television.

Let me start by saying I love to cook. I love to eat. I love food like artists love art, musicians love music and some guys love porn. I am addicted to good food, so much so that I dream about it, salivating over the images of imaginary dishes I create in my mind during my work day. It is easy to find me engaged in a creation while I go about my day, secretly mincing, dicing, sauteing and adding my own flair to another recipe that I crave. I crave food ~ and once it is in my mind, there is little that can bring the image, scent, taste and feel of it from my mind. Yes, the word obsessive does come to mind...

As I prepare to become a mother, I want to share my passion of homemade food. I want to prove to other mothers out there that you don't have to resort to pre-made, processed foods because of the lack of time and energy when dealing with a newborn. Sure, it takes a lot of energy and time, but for a fabulous well made meal it is worth it. Not only is the flavor a million times better, it is cheaper and healthier. The level of salt, fat, and lovely "extras" the food companies add to our prepackaged food is insane when compared to what you can make at home.

Please let me state that I am not wealthy, I am not a "Whole Foods" shopper and you will not see me picking up a twenty dollar organic chicken for our supper. I am a coupon clipper, sale searching real wife who shops at our local grocery stores and discount shops. I try to buy local vegetables and fruits when in season not because they taste better (even though they do) but because I am cheap and it is less expensive. Yes, I happily admit that I am cheap, I am always looking for ways to stretch our budget and now that this little guy is coming, I am always looking for ways to get a second meal out of the first.


I find that the best way to get a wonderful dish is to use fresh, simple ingredients. Tonight, I got a craving for a peach tart, and, as I said before, once in my mind it is hard to get it out. August is a wonderful time of the year for peaches, and here in Oregon we are lucky to find local ones. It is amazing how such simple ingredients such as flour, butter, eggs, sugar and peaches can make such a complex and mouth watering item. I took pictures before it went in the oven, salivating as it baked and had seconds once it was served. I am in heaven.... maybe I need thirds?

Summer Peach Tart
Pate Sucree:
1 1/3 cups flour
5 tbsp sugar
1/8 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp lard
5 tbsp cold unsalted butter
1 egg beaten with 1 tsp water
1 tsp vanilla
filling:
3-4 fresh peaches
2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp butter
sliced almonds as a garnish

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder. Rub lard and butter into the flour mixture until it resembles large pea sized lumps. In a small bowl, mix egg, water and vanilla with a fork and add to flour/butter mixture. Mix until dough comes together, pat out into a disk and place in plastic wrap for minimum of one hour.

Preheat oven to 375. Roll out chilled dough and place into tart shell. Gently stretch dough to fit the sides and pinch off over edge of shell. Line with foil and fill with pie weights or beans, bake for 15 minutes and let cool.

Boil a medium sized pot of water to a rolling boil. Add peaches and boil for 10 -15 seconds, remove and cool until you can handle them. Peel off skins, cut in half and remove pits. You can slice them or leave them in halves, depending on what you like best.

Sprinkle 3 tbsp of sugar over bottom of crust, place peaches in a pretty pattern over sugar until tightly packed. Top with remaining sugar and dot with cold butter. Place on a rimmed baking sheet to catch spills and bake for 30-40 minutes at 375 or until the fruit is slightly browned and juices are syrupy.

Remove from oven and let cool on a rack. Serve warm or cool. Yummy!!!