A year in the past and a year in the future

 

It's the last day of the year.  And it has been a great year.  I added many new foods to the menu of Bruce Bakery and Bistro.  I passed out a lot of great food to many people.  And the year was filled with many noteworthy events including my marriage to a wonderful and lovely woman.

It has indeed been a great year, full of wonderful and exciting things.

I have to admit I didn't meet all my food goals for the year.  I am a little behind on some promised additions to the menu, but those are still in progress and will not be forgotten.   

I have many other new dishes and treats I'm looking to add to the menu in the coming year.  And my wife has introduced me to several new foods, and I am eager to learn to make these.  And I have a long list of foods and recipes and ideas that I want to explore.

That's all for today.  Just a short post.  I'll be back tomorrow to talk about upcoming weekly menu offerings, and other things as well.

Upcoming offerings and kitchen accidents

 

It is a cold December night here in Kansas City.  A little ice is falling and we have a winter weather advisory that is in effect for the rest of the night as I write this entry.  Perfect weather for staying inside and eating some good food.

I've had the urge to make some palet d'or (see the photo above), and a few other similar super-rich desserts, so be on the lookout for those in upcoming weekly offerings.  For this coming weekend, I'm still on break.  But the first full weekend of January has two items that have been updated just now, ready for you to order.  Triple chocolate chunk cookies and yellow snack cake.

This past week I made a lot of food, many types of cookies, multiple types of brownies, some sandwich bread, lime slushes, and my wife made shami kebabs and chicken biryani.  Most of what we made became our contributions to a big feast.  We spent a lot of time in our kitchen these past few days.  

While making one of the batches of brownies, I happened to spill a few small blobs of brownie batter onto the glass-top stove.  I quickly took my finger and swiped it up to eat it from my fingertip.  I didn't realize the burner on which it had landed was still just a little bit hot from being on earlier.  Yikes!  I knew the burner was still to warm to touch, but my instinct was to grab that delicious bit of brownie batter right away.  A little ice immediately applied kept the burn at bay.   

It's so easy to make little mistakes in the kitchen which can lead to small accidents.  There are hot stovetops, hot pans coming from the oven, blenders and food processors, knives, and so on.  I try to mitigate all these risks as much as possible.  For instance, I never compress a kitchen trash bag by hand since it might contain a can lid with sharp edges.  (I came perilously close one time to having a deep cut because of a loose can lid in a trash bag.)  And I always wear a knife-resistant glove when cutting up vegetables and fruits and I even a have butcher's glove that I always wear when cutting up meats.  Two gloves?  Yes, so that there is no chance of cross contamination since one is used for meat only.  And that butcher's glove is just like chain-mail of the middle ages with lots of interlocking rings to keep a knife off the skin.

However, no matter what is done, I think that it is impossible to mitigate all chances of all types of accidents in the kitchen.  So sometimes when I get to moving too quickly in the kitchen, I have to find a way to slow down and take my time.  Sometimes, I'm simply a little careless, too.  Is that true for everyone else?  

The end of the year is coming.  As the year draws to a close and we prepare for a new year to start, keep putting aside time to make some good food and remember to do it safely.  Eat well and have a great week, everyone!  

Icy drinks

Today, as I type this in the late afternoon that is rapidly turning dark, it is chilly.  So what am I going to write about? I'm going to give a simple recipe for a lime slush.  Sounds crazy, right?  Well, I find this so refreshing that I love to drink it no matter if the weather is hot or cold .... or even downright frigid as it is today.

In a blender that is capable of crushing ice (don't use a food processor), place 3/4 cup of lime juice, 1 1/8 cup of sugar, enough ice to fill it to the 9 cup line, then add water to the same level.  Blend and crush it with pulses of the blender until all the ice is crushed.  

That's it.  Nothing more.  You can do the same thing with lemon juice, too.  And today after making a batch of lime slush, I was thinking about trying it with you strawberry/kiwi.  

Even in cold weather, I like to have cold drinks sometimes, and certainly ice cream.  Everyone knows my fondness for ice cream.  To sit in front of a good movie with a hot fudge sundae on a cold winter's night while covering myself with a comforter .... yeah, I know it sounds crazy but I like it anyway.

Now that I've had my lime slush, I feel in the mood for hot chocolate.  Time to make a batch.

Stay warm and safe with some good food tonight, folks.

Macaron shells gone wrong

We are only a few days away from winter, and it appears the weather is settling in to be colder every day.

This coming week and the week after, there will be no food orders as I take time off for a couple weekends.  But I will return the weekend of January 6th-8th with our next weekly menu.

Making food was an interesting set of opposites this week in terms of the final product.  On one hand, chocolate chunk grand cookies came out perfectly.  On the other hand, vanilla macarons did not.  If you see the picture above, you will see what I mean.  What are supposed to be nice smooth beautiful macaron shells turned out to be cracked and uneven.  What happened?  Well, I neglected a very important step.  The macaron batter was supposed to be deflated after whisking in the majority of the meringue into the blended almond meal and powdered sugar.  I didn't do that and the result was not pretty.  They tasted great, but did not look great at all.  I even had the notes clearly written in my recipe.  But somehow I didn't take the time to do it.  C'est la vie.  It will be stuck in my head the next time I make these, which will probably be sometime this week.

I'm getting ready to make several batches of cookies and some savory items including my savory egg salad (which will be made as sliders) this week for an important occasion.  I'm excited to be doing this and will be making cookies each day of the week and the dough will be frozen until needed on this weekend for fresh baking.  Plus I will be making a savory pie for someone special who has never had it before, and chicken roasted with herbs.  It will be a fun week in the kitchen.

Stay warm, everyone!  And have a great week!

Shopping ahead

Today is a chilly December day and next week we have very frigid temperatures coming, and that has me thinking about shopping ahead so that I don't have to go out in single-digit cold next week.  

I always find it fun to shop for groceries.  And since I never like to leave things to the last minute, shopping ahead and being redundant in terms of how much of various ingredients I have on hand is always something from which I derive great satisfaction and peace of mind.

There are three grocery stores close to me, and that's a very good thing because sometimes no matter how much I prepare, I get ready to make something and realize that I'm missing an ingredient.  I hate disrupting the rhythm I have established by having to go out to the grocery stores for a single ingredient.  It only takes a few minutes to get to each of the three stores near me, but I still find it annoying if I have to go because I was not as careful in planning as I should have been.

Today I'm making pancakes, brownies, and macarons.  The pancakes and brownies are for my own household, but the macarons are for this weekend's orders.  Why am I making them so early?  They have to be sealed and chilled for 48 hours in order to mature.  Chocolate chunk grand cookies are also on the menu and I will make the dough ahead of time because it needs to sit in the fridge for 24 hours before I bake the cookies.  That chilling time is something I find to be important in almost every chocolate chip cookie I make. 

Over the next several days I will be making many different foods.  It will be a nice activity to do inside while the frigid air is in place here in Kansas City.  Pasta alfredo with chicken, lasagna, and a savory pie are all on the agenda as well as a few other things like brioche and sandwich breads.

As winter approaches, I hope everyone stays warm and eats well.

Frosty morning

 

This morning is frosty and foggy and definitely feeling wintry.  What a great time to think about warm winter foods and fun seasonal treats.

This week we have vanilla macarons and chocolate chip cookies ready for ordering.  For the following two weekends, I will be taking the time off.  But I will return in January with more foods for everyone to try.

The winter season makes me think of foods I've had in the past.  Some of my favorite childhood things have been brought onto my menu, things such as the ice box dessert, for example.  Sometimes, though, I think back to foods that I can no longer find.  I remember there was a great bakery that made amazing Danish.  And then the bakery closed down.  I tried to track down the head baker there after the closure to see if I could talk to him about these wonderful Danish.  But I never could get in contact with him.  He had been doing his job for decades and I don't know if he is completely retired or something else.  But I often think of those Danish and work at trying to recreate them.  So far, though, I have been able to come close, but not quite close enough for my satisfaction.  I have a definite commitment to uncovering the secret of these Danish; not quite an obsession, but it is something that is regularly on my mind when I am thinking of foods I want to add to the menu.

During the next few weeks I have plans to make many foods.  Some will be for additions to the menu.  It's going to be a fun winter season.

If you are trying some new things, please leave a comment and let me know what you're doing.

In the meantime, eat well and take time to appreciate the good things in life.

December

December is here and that means winter is almost upon us.  And that means cold weather with hot chocolate and snow.  My favorite time of the year.

This week, you can order chili and mint chocolate chip ice cream.  For next week, we have chocolate chunk grand cookies and something that is appearing on the weekly menu for the first time -- vanilla macarons.

My youngest daughter and her husband brought me a little gift yesterday:  a whipped cream dispenser and a carton of nitrous oxide cartridges.  I've thought many times of getting one of these to try out but hadn't yet gotten around to it.  So I'm grateful for their gift.  I will try it out with whipped cream toppings for the ice cream this week.

I'm beginning to wind down the 2022 piano teaching year.  The last lessons are in 9 days, on December 14th and then my students will be on holiday break until early January.  During that break, I will cook many things.  Grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches, brioche, chicken with herbs, more ice cream, strawberry and cream cake, sandwiches of various types, and cinnamon rolls.  As you can see, my mind is filled with many things I want to make and explore during the early winter season.

Food is one of the great joys of life so using my teaching breaks to make lots of good food is one of my joys.  As your winter season comes into focus, I hope you get to make and eat great food, and share it with family and friends as well.

That's all for now.  Have a great Monday, all!